Killing Time

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

Genre hopping is the favorite sport of today's pop stars, and few performers play the game better than Beck. On his major-label debut, Mellow Gold (1994), Beck helped re-energize folk motifs by combining them with hip-hop beats. On his new album, Mutations (DGC), Beck has mostly abandoned hip-hop. His new sound draws largely from older, traditional styles: pure folk, blues and, on the spirited song Tropicalia, bossa nova. The energy of Beck's hip-hop/folk experimentation is missed here; this is a ruminative album that's more about quiet revelation than sonic revolution. In fact, Beck delivers almost every song in a drained drone; Mutations would have been better had it been a little livelier.

Still, there is something coolly mesmerizing and wonderfully disturbing about the CD. Beck's lyrics, though elusive, are not nonsense. They obsess about issues of death and decay, and they strike at something deep, evoking feelings of sadness, melancholy and regret. "A worm of hope/ a hangman's rope/ pulls me one way or the other," he sings on Cold Brains. On another track he sings, "Treated you like a rusty blade/ A throwaway from an open grave."

Beck's voice on this album sounds worn and weary, as if he's seen it all and seen enough. Everything seems disposed or disposable; his song titles include Cancelled Check, Lazy Flies and Dead Melodies. Yet, calmed by his voice, we lean closer, listen closely. Beck's music does not overwhelm his musings.

--By Christopher John Farley