One Foot In The Grave

Sound DNA

• Alt/Indie
• Lo-Fi

• lo-fi
• wistful

About

Beck Hansen released three albums in 1994. Though <i>Mellow Gold</i> was the major-label hit, the cozy outliers <i>Stereopathic Soulmanure</i> and <i>One Foot in the Grave</i> flanked his commercial breakthrough. Like its companion, <i>One Foot in the Grave</i> favors rickety folk blues over genre-crossed extroversion. Produced by Beat Happening’s Calvin Johnson, this record features a cross-section of Pacific Northwest indie players, including members of Lync, Built to Spill, and The Presidents of the United States of America. But because it’s so bare-bones and lo-fi by design, it’s really Beck that shines here. He’s happy to show off some of his less likely influences too: opener “He’s a Mighty Good Leader” reworks Skip James’ “Jesus is a Mighty Good Leader,” and “Fourteen Rivers Fourteen Floods” echoes the Black spiritual “You Gotta Move,” which The Rolling Stones also recorded. Yet Beck still works in plenty of his signature absurdity: although “Girl Dreams” is based loosely on The Carter Family song “Lover’s Lane,” his added lyrics make it more darkly comic. Likewise, “Cyanide Breath Mint” sneaks the faux revelation “I got a funny feeling/They got plastic in the afterlife” into an album ostensibly mulling over the specter of death. Johnson sings in tandem with Beck on “I Get Lonesome,” adding a gravelly extra shade to that loose and twanging dirge. “I’ve Seen the Land Beyond” plays like a traditional doom-and-gloom number, but it’s actually an original. Most of the songs hover at around two minutes, with the distortion-caked “Burnt Orange Peel” adding more momentum thanks to its upbeat strumming and singing. A scrappy precursor to both The White Stripes’ “Fell in Love With a Girl” and the fuzzed-out transmissions of early Love As Laughter, it stands out on an otherwise laidback record whose vibe is halfway between a campfire and a haunted house. Elsewhere, “Ziplock Bag” stakes out an exaggerated, rasping take on the blues, while the Sam Jayne co-written “Forcefield” is whispered and almost incantatory. These low-stakes ruminations have since enjoyed a surprising afterlife, with Tom Petty covering “Asshole” two years later, and Beck revisiting the outtake “Jack-Ass” for 2002’s <i>Sea Change</i>. Shoring up his underground cred at the time of release while providing a prolonged object of fascination until <i>Odelay</i> arrived in 1996, <i>One Foot in the Grave</i> is more than just as a pre-fame time capsule. It’s Beck stripped of studio polish or radio-friendly aspirations, paying open homage while paying his dues.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits