LaRM day 33 (Beck-Bee Gees)

Mutations (1998) is a low-key follow-up to Odelay, and it's a quieter, more introspective effort, despite having the usual Dadaist lyrics. Beck still throws everything into the mix, from folk to bossa nova, but there's no big indie club tunes here, just quiet experimentalism. It's a nice record, but it feels like a come down after Odelay's late night party. I haven't got either the Prince-alike Midnite Vultures, or the parade of pastiches that is Sea Change, so we skip straight on to 2005's Guero. This is something of a return to the anything goes rock of Odelay, but it's much calmer, more assured and, dare I say it, more crafted. The songs are considered and structured rather than just charging headlong and hoping for the best (an approach which paid massive dividends on Odelay but crashed and burned on Midnite Vultures). If anything Guero is more a songwriters album, still chock full of ideas and excellent noises but never overloading itself. What it also demonstrates is that, once again, it's the Dust Brothers who have had a large part to play in creating the sound of Beck's best albums.

Beck and the Dust Brothers also put together follow-up The Information (2006) and it's pretty much more of the same, but even more cool, laid-back, casual. If anything I like The Information more than any of Beck's other albums because it wears its influences quite clearly without simply coming across as pastiche (I don't think anybody else in the world likes The Information more than Odelay but there we are). For the most part these are really lovely songs and there is no trace of Odelay's jittery discomfort. This is a record made by some blokes mellowing as they get older and more experienced in the skill of record making and songwriting, as well as the art. The only downside is, as usual, there's too much of it for one sitting. Finally we have 2008's Modern Guilt, which he made with Dangermouse instead of the Dust Brothers. This doesn't suffer from the overextended playing time, clocking in at just over half an hour. It's an aptly titled album, as it has an air of discontent about it and the tunes come and go without much ceremony but leave a distinct sense of something not quite right. It's a great record and the seam of darkness to it is a nice change. It's got some great edgy pop songs as well as the usual low-key experimentation.

And now we move on to something faintly ridiculous, it's the first few albums by the Bee Gees. First album 1st (1967) is a not very good album of Beatles rip-offs (the Bee Gees really, really wanted to be the Beatles) but there are a couple of fantastic hints of the songwriting chops they would develop in 'New York Mining Disaster 1941' and particularly 'Every Christian Lion Hearted Man Will Show You', which is an awesome song. The follow-up Horizontal (1968) is more of the same slavish devotion to the Fab Four but it too has some fabulous songs on it ('Massachusetts', 'The Earnest of Being George'). Occasionally though the increasing sophistication of their rip-offs really does jar, as basslines and vocal melodies lifted almost wholesale from Beatles songs represent themselves under the brothers Gibb's tremulous voices. Third album Idea (1968) continues the theme, but this is where, in amongst the obvious pastiche (which they have expanded to include a number of other 60's acts to ape), the real strength of the Gibb's songwriting starts to properly demonstrate itself, with such giants of late 60's pop as 'I've Got to Get a Message To You' and especially the bizarrely brutal 'I Started a Joke'. There still is a strong sense that the Bee Gees were a convenient tool for making money by creating such pitch-perfect and unironic copies of the Beatles and the Zombies (and anyone else required pretty much) and three albums in you can't help but wonder at what point the Bee Gees stopped being simply copyists and became a band worthy of note in their own right.

That development actually came in 1970 with the increasing disharmony in the band and the release of the frankly bizarre but brilliant album Odessa. The internal strife over the writing, recording and track listing of Odessa led to Robin actually quitting the band for a couple of years, and it's often the way that a band's best work is also the one that they didn't know the quality of themselves at the time. But with the benefit of an ealry mark from work, I'm off, so Odessa will kick us off on Monday. Cheeeeeers.