SMS: Midnite Vultures

Beck Makes It Funky

It’s SMS—Saturday Morning Spin—time. Grab a cup of java, tea, or hot chocolate. Warm up the tubes on your old Macintosh receiver. Crank up your record player, whisk the dust off the album, and drop the needle on this classic slab o’ vinyl. Well, your old compact disc is fine, too, since this album is a holy-grail collectible.

BECK

Midnite Vultures

(Geffen, 1999))

Beck Hansen, gettin’ funky y’all, and it’s a joyous reason to celebrate. An album with many twists and turns and plenty of background support from some very unlikely places. Horns, synths, string sections, fiddles, pedal steel, and plenty more make this a poppin’ rockin’ party record. Even The Dust Brothers get to throw it down again on two tracks. So you were worried after the super indie vibe of Mutations. Well, that was a record that Beck didn’t want Geffen to release in the first place. This should make everyone happy—the label with dollar signs in its eyes, the alternative crowd that hates the sell-out vibe of most major label geeks, as well as the rest of us who like good music regardless of the street cred.

The lead-off track “Sexx Laws” starts with a Tower of Power ‘70s horn line that slips into Beck’s vocals. It rocks hard and funky, and smokes start to finish with Beck pleading “I’m not afraid to cry” before a banjo and pedal steel ease into the mix. I must admit that on paper this sounds way silly, but trust me, it works.

Next up is “Nicotine & Gravy,” a kinda T.Rex vamp circa Zinc Alloy. D.J. Swamp adds some tasteful scratching as keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr. (once of the beloved Jellyfish, but now one of Beck’s brigade) adds his weird synth textures. In fact, most of the best keyboard grooves ooze from this man’s fingers. Manning and Beck were born to work together. “Mixed Bizness” is a strong and relentless pop-rock dance track. Think Talking Heads during their Stop Making Sense tour. Beck even corrupts his vocals with a vocoder (i.e., cheesy) without drowning the proceedings.

“Peaches & Cream” and “Debra” could be Prince doing Beck, but instead it’s Beck outdoing Prince, complete with falsetto vocals. I love the horns, funky Fender Rhodes, and Beck’s sexy lover rap on the outro of the latter. (Somebody should have gotten these songs to Prince.) Elsewhere, former Smiths axe-slinger Johnny Marr adds some tasteful guitar on “Milk & Honey” and Beth Orton adds background vocals on the sumptuous ballad “Beautiful Way.”

Is Beck underappreciated in 2026? In a year (1999) that found me hard-pressed to pick five, let alone ten, “great” new records, Beck had single-handedly saved the day. As broad a canvas as music can be painted upon and still appeal to everyone.

This album, my friends, is a feast for all midnight vultures, late-night slackers, and Saturday morning sleepers. Wake up your neighbors. Never too late to join the party.