West Coast-born genre blender Beck has established one of modern rock music’s most diverse and captivating discographies. From his explorations into electronic pop balladry (2019’s Hyperspace) to stretching the limits of indie rock (2008’s Modern Guilt), Beck has proven to have a restless creativity that leads him down genre-shattering paths. Of all these daring dives into rock’s subgenres, it is the albums that encompass a bit of everything that acts as the crown jewels of Beck’s legacy. Ironically, returning to familiar territory yields the most memorable and daring pieces of the artist’s career, and therein lies the magical longevity of albums like 2005’s Guero.
Beck’s ninth studio album Guero was released twenty years ago (3/29/05) and these thirteen songs pick up where the artist’s seminal 1996 album, Mellow Gold and 1999’s upbeat Midnight Vultures left off in more ways than one. The album saw Beck working with the Dust Brothers, who helped shape his ‘96 effort, for the first time for a full LP since their mid-nineties meeting and had the artist penning a heartfelt ode to childhood memories. The album’s title, Guero, translates to “Blond” and is used as slang in Mexican Spanish to refer to a light-skinned person. Beck, a man of a paler complexion, often heard this word thrown at him while growing up in the predominantly Mexican Los Angeles area. He took this sentiment and created an album that forced the artist to reflect on his blazing quick rise to stardom and return to his sonic and physical roots.
Guero was recorded over nine months at multiple studios throughout the Los Angeles area, allowing Beck to connect with the area that raised him wholeheartedly. The album was a drastic shift from Beck’s heartbreaking and linear Sea Change LP and saw Beck return to the genre-hopping artist we were all introduced to. Thanks to the Dust Brothers’ sample-heavy production approach, Beck was given a blank slate for Guero, and the portrait he painted is one of unforgettable proportions.
The tracklist jumps from hip-hop-influenced cuts like “Qué Onda Guero” to moments of experimental garage rock like “Scarecrow.” While an all-over-the-place tracklist is nothing new for the artist, Beck’s nuanced fusion work feels more mature and realized in later efforts like this 2005 LP. The subtle funk influences on moments like “Black Tambourine” collide with the electro-rock of “Emergency Exit,” creating an explosion of Beck’s influences and how he can melt them down and mold something entirely new. His experimental blending of genres is also more accessible on Guero than his previous work’s wonky lo-fi, which may explain why the album was such an instant success.
Beck’s ninth studio album debuted at number two on the Billboard charts and sold over 160,000 copies in its first week. It only took a few months for the album to be certified gold by the RIAA, an achievement Beck reached by June 2005. Guero received critical acclaim across the board, scoring a perfect five-star score from The Independent and four-star reviews from Rolling Stone and The Guardian. The album received a remix edition in December of 2005, with the likes of Ad-Rock and Boards of Canada adding their unique flavor to tracks like “Black Tambourine” and “Broken Drum.”
Beck’s return to form was a wild success, and Guero is an underrated piece of the artist’s colorful catalog. It is thirteen tracks of modern fusion music that doubles as a love letter to the childhood that shaped Beck and how he perceived these experiences when he recorded this LP. It is possible that, by proving he could’ve stayed in a singular lane, Beck felt more confident in the genre explorations that helped build the discography we have in front of us today. Twenty years have passed, and Guero never lost that freshness that made Beck’s work so exciting to begin with.
