Dig that creepy-ass artwork! It looks like someone tried, from memory, to paint a picture their grandmother had on the wall that they hadn’t thought about since they were a child. I hope this comes out as a big 12″ with some crazy remixes. It’s definitely ripe for some reworking. I just want to be able to put hands on a big handsome, preferably matte, version of this artwork.
Lots of people are surprised that an artist whose sound has changed none-too-subtly from album to album has (gasp!) tweaked his sound again! To those folks I say that this doesn’t strike me as any great leap from some of Sea Change (produced by Radiohead’s Nigel Godrich) or Modern Guilt (produced by Danger Mouse). How quickly people forget! I mean, his most recent “album” of songs was released officially only as individual pieces of sheet music for boutique published McSweeney’s. Whatever direction you take after making a thing like that will naturally be anything but predictable.
I’m really digging this new track. I have to admit, I had low expectations for a song called “Defriended” written by a guy whose classic output was released well before the advent of Facebook, but I’m just a knee-jerk skeptic I guess. I’ve listened to this thing on repeat for easily the past half-hour and have yet to get tired of it. What can I say, I’m a sucker for the soft warmth of lazily syncopated drums and backwards synths. “Defriended” is a a tube-ride down a slow moving stream, never rushing through its motions. How not-in-a-rush is it? It’s more than 25 percent over before the vocals even kick in. This thing takes its time, letting you really sink into it before shifting its position even slightly.
This single, designed as a little one-off teaser, was tossed out as an appetizer not for his next album which, unlike this song, will be fully acoustic, but presumably for the album that will follow. Beck simply couldn’t hang on to it. It’s as if he’s saying, “Here. Have a comfortable summer. See you soon.”
Whos the artist that painted the artwork?