Musical chameleons don't come more skittish than Beck. Unlike Bowie, his personality doesn't change so much from album to album, or even from song to song, as from nano-thought to nano-thought, resulting in albums like last year's Midnite Vultures, high on pastiche, low on musical depth. His mission seems to be to cram as much conflicting paraphernalia as possible into three minutes. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's too cluttered, sometimes it feels like watching an MTV montage.
Live, these criticisms don't really count, since, even with the sort of budget his record company is willing to throw at him, Beck is never going to replicate the bricolage of his last two albums, Odelay and Vultures. He mixes up the samples on Beercan, adds new ones on New Pollution. He doesn't even sound that much like Beck: on record his voice has a slacker charm; in Wembley Arena, it sounds as if he has just rushed in from the dentist.
Still, taking hints from his current hero, Prince, Beck has learned to surround himself with fantastic musicians (including genius ex-Jellyfish leader Roger Manning on keyboards) and loosen up the Generation X Sly Stone within. In 1995, Beck's live shows were messy; these days, they're explosive. Beck not only has the moves, he's also mastered the technique of making something painstakingly choreographed look completely unrehearsed.
Pivoting, swivelling, balancing on top of his guitar, Beck is what everyone who had Star Wars figures in the late 70s and loved pop music thought being twentysomething would be about. Articulation is still a problem; showmanship definitely isn't. The deepest "message" any screwed-up teenager could possibly get from Beck's music is along the lines of "Catfish bifocals. Log flume. Thanks for the picnic. Upholstery." But perhaps that is a good thing - surrealism has to be a better influence for would-be slacker misanthropes than self-loathing.
Beck feels pretty vital at the moment, partly because his skewed, splintered worldview seems to fit so well with the times, partly because he proves that showing off isn't always mutually aligned with a big head and a compromised artist. But mostly because he's the nearest thing a part-time contemporary pop fan gets to feeling like they are being treated like they have a brain. His wisdom comes in bite-size, upside-down, incoherent chunks, but the fact that he has sneaked it past the conveyor belt and into the laps of an audience of this magnitude is some achievement.
BR>Beck plays Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow (0141-287 7777), tonight. This review appeared in some editions yesterday.
***** Unmissable **** Recommended *** Enjoyable ** Mediocre * Terrible
