Beck: Mutations (LP+7") [BONG LOAD]

Why you'll love it

This edition pairs the album with a bonus 7-inch single carrying two extra songs, including "Runners Dial Zero." Mutations won the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album, went gold in the US and reached No. 13 on the Billboard 200.

This edition

• 7" single included
• Pressed in the EU

About the album

Odelay made Beck a sample-collage star, so naturally the follow-up went the other way. He brought in Nigel Godrich, fresh from Radiohead's OK Computer, and swapped the samples and hip hop beats for acoustic guitars, Moog keyboards and string arrangements. The lyrics turned more sombre and serious too, and the result sounds like a late night with the windows open.

"Cold Brains" opens in a gentle, rumpled haze, "Nobody's Fault but My Own" and "Dead Melodies" are some of the most heartfelt songs he'd written, and "Tropicalia" is a bright, Brazilian-flavoured shuffle. The players include Smokey Hormel on guitar and cuica, Warren Klein on sitar and tamboura, Greg Leisz on pedal steel and David Campbell arranging and conducting the strings, with Joey Waronker on percussion. "Lazy Flies," "O Maria" and "Static" round out a beautifully unhurried record.

Beck played "Tropicalia" on Saturday Night Live to promote it, and AllMusic later called it one of the finest albums of the 1990s. Autumn de Wilde shot the cover of Beck tangled in plastic wrap, which is also how we'd recommend storing it.

Also at Kops: more Beck on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On DGC / Bong Load, a reissue of the 1998 album.