Beck: Mellow Gold [DGC / HIP-O]

Why you'll love it

Mellow Gold went platinum on the back of "Loser," one of the great out-of-nowhere hits of the '90s, and it introduced the world to Beck's genre-hopping, cut-and-paste genius.

This edition

• Mellow Gold on vinyl
• DGC / Hip-O pressing

About the album

Before Odelay and Sea Change, Beck Hansen was a twentysomething folkie-slash-noise-kid in Los Angeles recording songs on a four-track in his friends' living rooms. Mellow Gold gathers those home-brewed experiments into one gloriously weird record that mashes folk, hip hop, blues, psychedelia, country and punk into something nobody had heard before.

"Loser" ("Soy un perdedor...") is the hit, built on a slide guitar loop and a beat cobbled together in an afternoon, but "Pay No Mind," "Beercan," "Nitemare Hippy Girl" and "Blackhole" are every bit as fun. Funny, scuzzy and wildly inventive, it still sounds like nobody else.

Also at Kops: more Beck on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On DGC / Hip-O, a reissue of the 1994 album.