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Originally Posted by Mr Biglesworth
I'm so not. I've been listening to it since I made this post.
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I only listened to the first half of the album before running off to a meeting, but I wasn't very impressed. It seemed a bit too standard.
I hate that argument, ordinarily. I remember when people said that about Beck's "Guero", and how the album didn't show any musical or artistic progression. I agreed that much--the music SOUNDED like Beck sans his usual sprinklings of musical innovation--but regardless it was a good album. The lack of a novel sound did not hinder the album; contrarily, it provided something unexpected: an album that steered fans out of the normative reinvention of Beck's sound.
But
Year Zero seems too regular, too expected. It's no more harsh than it has been in the past, but it seems less raunchy and more disjointed than I would've wanted. The Beginning of the End is a really weak song to have as the second track; it slows down the plunge into YZ's riffed depths. It's like the asthmatic kid in gym class who costs you the dodge ball game because he messes up early. I'll certainly give the album more listens, but so far it comes across as fattened off the
modus operandi of more than a decade of fandom.