The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Beck

[#] Midnite Vultures (1999)

What getting crazy with the Cheez Whiz actually sounds like.

Reviewed March 27, 2025

I want you to take a good, long, hard look at those neon lights paving Beck's streets. You see how grimy they are? There might be strip joints with laser light shows and robots doing it cowgirl on stage, but every club's got a brick wall out back covered in puke, and this one is no different. His horn sections might make your hips twitch, but Beck's idea of foreplay is still a banjo solo. Put it this way—he really can smell the V.D. in the club tonight, and Midnite Vultures comes from a world of milk and honey, where they mix business with leather (as bought at Old Navy), where they do your laundry one night and hand your ass over to the state police the next, and where the most romantic vehicles are Hyundais. They call it Los Angeles.

Midnite Vultures went from the single most divisive album Beck has ever made to, well, it might still be that. Fuck 'em. This had me grinning ear to ear and thinking "this might be the most fun I've ever had listening to a record". Nearly every song has at least one, if not several, genuinely hilarious lines, all adding up to a thoroughly entertaining, absurdist mashup of millennial R&B and throwback synth-funk. Tell me that "Get Real Paid" isn't the nastiest shit, go ahead. Tell me "Hollywood Freaks" isn't the glam-rap track to end all glam-rap tracks, I'll wait. If you don't appreciate a gentle, breezy pedal steel love ballad like "Beautiful Way" right in the middle of your orgy (brought to you by Windows Me), you have no soul. And that insane falsetto on "Debra"? Shiiiit.

Essential:	"Nicotine & Gravy", "Get Real Paid", "Beautiful Way"
Quintessential:	"Hollywood Freaks"
Non-Essential:	"Peaches & Cream" depending on the night
Rating: