BECK HANSON had a seismic 1994. Not only did his career go stratospheric courtesy of his evergreen slacker anthem 'Loser' and its' parent album 'Mellow Gold', but within four months of those achievements he put out his 'mutant folk' album 'One Foot In The Grave'. It may have circulated with considerably less fanfare, but it was always regarded by the 'heads' and it's since been hailed as a lo-fi masterpiece in wider circles. Hence its' exalted, deluxe re-issue with a generous 16 additional tracks.
The original 'One Foot In The Grave', though, was one in the eye for those of Beck's new-found 'Loser' converts who were dogged enough to track it down at the time. Recorded on a low budget 8-track reel-to-reel with Kurt Cobain favourite Calvin Johnson (Beat Happening) at his Dub Narcotic studio in Olympia, Washington, the album was skeletal and exploratory with members of Built To Spill and The Spinanes casually dropping round and ending up backing Beck on around half the tunes.
Thus, spontaneity and a first-take, seat-of-the-pants vibe pervades and anyone expecting the more-polished sound of Beck's next masterpiece – 1996's influential 'Odelay' – may well have got the shock of their lives. Crucially, though, a similar playfulness and desire to probe a variety of styles is present and correct and at times Beck pulls off some glorious successes seemingly against the run of play.
The stoned camp fire strumming of 'He's A Mighty Good Leader' sets the tone. It's one of many such acoustic ventures and one of the best, although the deathly, folksy thrum of 'Cyanide Mint Breath' and the immortally-titled 'Asshole' (later covered by Tom Petty, no less!) run it close, while the charming 'Hollow Log' features a lyric (“stay up all night gettin' drunk, sleeping on a hollow log”) which captures the spirit of the sessions in a simple couplet.
Elsewhere, Beck – by accident or design – sounds way older than the fresh-faced twenty year-old whizz he was at the time. The footstompin' Delta folk of 'Fourteen Rivers, Fourteen Floods' sounds like Lightnin' Hopkins reborn. 'I've Seen The Land Beyond' could almost be Woody Guthrie and the amusing 'Painted Eyelids' finds Beck admitting “I'm in need of a good meal/ and a life to call my own” while his pick-up band try to work out the melody as they go along.
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Inevitably, there are times when the spontaneity backfires. 'Ziplock Bag' sounds like an attempt to evoke Black Sabbath's debut album on a $10 budget with RL Burnside's slide guitar shoved down its' throat and sounds twice as chaotic. 'Forcefield' makes like the blueprint for Devandra Banhart's stoned wittering and the intensely annoying 'Atmospheric Conditions' amounts to little more than inchoate fumbling in the cold light of day.
The bonus tracks throw up a further bout of cool cuts, however. There's a sketchy, but intriguing 'It's All In Your Mind' which would much later appear on 'Sea Change' in a radically different guise. The spirited 'Mattress' proffers heroic maracas and rhymes “hips” with “potato chips” and the charmingly poppy 'Teenage Wastebasket' is one of the most 'finished' – and best – things here. It's given a run for its' money by the bizarre, Appalachian a capella of 'Sweet Satan' and the title track: a stompin', rootin'-tootin' harmonica-blastin' thang which lays down the blueprint for The White Stripes in two and a half minutes flat.
'One Foot In The Grave', then, remains a seething sprawl of innocence, inspiration and abject madness which Beck Hanson and Calvin Johnson indulged in simply because they could. It may still dress like the spotty, slightly smelly cousin at the family re-union, but its' adoption by a respected label fifteen years on suggests it no longer has to gatecrash its' own party.
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