If one squinted hard enough and clicked his heels just-so Monday night in Salt Lake City, it was easy to fake like it was Beck's back porch he was sitting on. It didn't matter there were 500 or so others doing their share of squinting as well. And the occasional song wasn't much of an interruption to the whole, rather, a cause for new directions in the conversation he was leading. Because that's all he really wanted to do: Beck's a talker. He skirted past the tired weather and Great Salt Lake jokes rather easily, saving up inspiration for the new shopping center that'd gone up in town just last year. It was that building – the blessed Gateway – he'd wanted to create his impromptu mini funk-opera about, fitting in Sharper Image and ionic hair wands and storm clouds. Who knew he'd find his muse in an outdoor mall?
It was his show more than ever. The whole point of the tour-before-the-tour is his idea of blowing off steam, getting to delve into the songs he isn't normally able to get out. It's a simple matter of indulgence. Tunes like “Cold Brains” and “Asshole” received their due. The focus was placed back in what the shaggy-haired lyrical wizard could do when just using an acoustic guitar and harmonica to wrap around his voice. The last tour saw him in sleeveless neon duds and writhing around on an oversized bed lowered from the rafters, belting out Prince falsettos. This one he wears blue jeans and a YMCA tee and does more than his fair share of strumming. One might consider it the exact opposite of the excess he fancied with Midnite Vultures. Maybe it's a breather he needs before doing it all over again for the new September release, the Flaming Lips in tow. Then again, perhaps he's a little anxious to get back to the folk roots he started from, going so far as to get completely countrified with Hank Williams' “I Heard that Lonesome Whistle Blow”. He can do it well, too, just as easily as he morphed into a hip hop freakshow bent on stealing James Brown's giddy dancing soul.
Scenes from the porch ranged his receiving a call on his cell not two songs into the display (“I'm doing the show. It's going pretty good. Yeah, there's about 10 people here.”) to pounding out the piano keys into “The Humpty Dance” on a whim. There was a muzaked version of “Jack-Ass” that just never quite picked up. He picked up a white towel from the stage and folded it. Response: hungry applause. There were stories of breaking instruments in the first song of a NYC show instead of the last (“We didn't have anywhere to go from there.”). It was a voyeuristic display of show ‘n tell, where he was allowed to bounce from his stool to the organ to the piano bench. He was the home schooled whiz kid showing off in a music recital of one (along with Smokey on intermittent bass). A-pluses and stars by his name all around. The man-child may have an ADD complex of sorts, but he was funny and personable. Blame it Ozzy and his offspring for enticing us into wanting to watch, peepholes or no.
Not that those who'd come to hear music left disappointed. Consider the personable brand of goofiness the icing between the dense slabs of layer cake. As for the layers, chew on this: “Dead Melodies” was given the double acoustic guitar treatment. Add an extra neck to “Sissyneck” (a bottle neck, that is) and it becomes a mad display of the Delta blues ending as a beer commercial for Michelob. “Fourteen Rivers Fourteen Floods” was the only song to promote side-by-side stomping between Beck and Smokey and, if the crowd hadn't been so nullified by the mostly slow soulful balladry, it'd have caught fire through rows as well. As things stood, the new record's going to be “pretty ... acoustic, quiet” and, given the ample preview, the man wasn't lying. While “Side of the Road” and “Sunday Sun” hail back to the days of Mutations, it appears he's made things even more naked this time around. Sparse sounds and one doesn't need a secret decoder for everything coming out his mouth. Just a penchant for a new kind of poetry.
Beck ended as he'd started – save for the pinker cheeks – alone on a stage filled with instruments, some he'd touched, others he hadn't even given a look. In the single begged encore, he proved he could play the Lou Reed copycat well and fine with a cover of VU's “Sunday Morning” and another classic of his creation, “Nobody's Fault But My Own”. He did leave ever the guilty party. While the Generation Beatnik crowd wandered out all smiles and dwelling on what'd just taken place, it was at least clear they were leaving just as enamored with the wee man they'd come to see as when they'd arrived two hours before, and maybe even a little more so.
