THE HARDEST-WORKING MAN IN SHOWBIZ

Looks like the Sad Beck of 2014’s Morning Phase has been replaced by the Happy Beck of Odelay and Midnite Vultures. The venerated artist is drawing raves across the board as he tours the U.K. Wrote Will Hodgkinson, reviewing for The Times of London:

“The [diminuitive] man [in a large hat] was Beck, the Los Angeles polymath who can turn his hand to anything. He started in the early 1990s with an unlikely mix of funk, hip-hop and folk, headed towards sad Gallic pop with 2002’s Sea Change and arrived at mellow FM rock on last year’s Morning Phase. And for this concert he did it all. Beck busted out his best dance moves, lay down in mock exhaustion, got the vast crowd singing along and played the hits, from the 1990s slacker anthem ‘Loser’ to the seductive soul pastiche ‘Debra,’ which contains the immortal line ‘lady, step into my Hyundai.’ His set was an hour’s worth of energy, invention and joyfulness, complete with costume changes (he returned for the dancefloor classic ‘Where It’s At’ in a sharp white suit) and enough expert musicianship and bravura showmanship to justify his status as the white James Brown.”