Tracks

“Green Light”
Beck
Sonic Youth’s “Green Light” pops up in the middle of EVOL, the 1986 album that saw the band’s discordant doom coalesce into its trademark American pop-trash. Bizarrely tuned guitars, stiff shambling bass and a storm of rumbling drums and feedback in the bridge—it’s not the most likely candidate for a folk ballad. Yet Beck faithfully plucks SY’s skewed chords on his acoustic nevertheless. Remarkably, the instrument’s hollow-bodied twang imbues the tune with an even eerier air, lilting like a wobbly waltzer with an inner-ear imbalance. A piano finds the needle of melody in the original’s squall, and what seemed like an improbability on paper—Sonic Youth without electricity—becomes long overdue. Apparently, Beck, perhaps bored, has knocked out a complete take on EVOL. We’re itching to hear what he did to “Tom Violence.”

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