Beck
Theatre at Madison Square Garden
Filter Grade: 86%
by Tom Birner | 01.01.2007

At a Beck show you will find dazzling rhythms, intricate percussions, and a six-foot long ghetto blaster and fine china with which to get funky. His sense of irony is matched only by his enormous talent, and his band, unsurprisingly, is a ragtag bunch of talented musicians (except for maybe that guy who mostly just dances and carries around aforesaid ghetto blaster). As eccentric as they appear, they probably have never smoked a drug in their life, which cannot be said about their puppets, judging by their appearance on “Broken Drum.” But more on the puppets later...

Donned in a black tux and red bowtie and with hair down to his shoulders, Beck resembled a skater on prom night. He came out swinging with “Loser,” before plugging into his amp and filling the end of trip-mambo number “Black Tambourine” filthily. Then back to the oldies but goodies (“New Pollution,” “Devil’s Haircut”) and the oldies but flat (“Mixed Bizness”). New album The Information, which has garnered typical strong reviews, came out smoothly: even if “Think I’m In Love” sounded like elevator music, “Elevator Music” had that casual pugnacity that brought Beck complete indifference from the hip hop world in favor of an ‘alternative’ tag that was actually deserved, unless you consider bands like Soundgarden and Nirvana danceable. He’s David Bowie-meets-Donald Fagen. At once his songs often sound futuristic yet fit for vinyl, as noted tonight on the cold funk of “Paper Tiger.” Later, the band sat down to dinner (yes, onstage) to hear an acoustic Beck play the other tracks off Sea Change, before performing a furious percussion session with their silverware as their front man spit rhymes into the microphone.

The encore was performed in bear outfits, naturally, and was preceded by a puppet show upon the big screen. The puppets were a big hit throughout the act, mimicking the band behind a curtain in the back of the stage. In fact, you got a sense the audience spent more time studying them than they did the band. But nobody seemed to miss Ryan, Beck’s personal dancer/prop comic, play some eight foot tall instrument resembling a fishing pole on new single “Nausea,” a feat replicated by Borat on “The Late Show With David Letterman” a week and a half later.

Throw in some impromptu bluegrass harmonies, multiple drummers, smoking harmonica fills and whiz kid sampling, and the show was a live equivalent to Beck’s discography: artful, dopey, and above all, musical.