Beck's status as one of the "important" artists of the 1990s will do his latest album no favours.

The so-called official followup to 1997's Odelay, after all, doesn't set new standards, raises no bars and revolutionizes nothing.

With Midnite Vultures, Beck is just trying to make a playful, superficial party-funk album and, on that level, he scores repeatedly, like a handsome millionaire in a brothel. These 12 new tunes are full of elastic grooves, surreal sex-obsessed lyrics and, interestingly, '80s-pop references twisted into '90s shapes.

The influence of prime-period Prince snakes through most of the album, but is made explicit on the kinky soul slowie Debra, sung in a lascivious falsetto. Elsewhere he works in elements of early Depeche Mode electro-disco (Get Real Paid) and old-skool hip-hop (Hollywood Freaks, which niftily samples Tom Tom Club's Genius of Love).

The strange sonic alchemy, however, remains unmistakably Beckian: How the horn-driven Memphis soul of first single Sexx Laws makes room for a banjo-pickin' hootenanny; or how Nicotine and Gravy keeps piling on disparate elements -- Philly soul strings, a Day in the Life orchestral crescendo, a snake-charmer coda -- until the song collapses under the weight of too many ideas.

If Midnite Vultures has a weakness, this is it: Beck can be too clever for his own good, resulting in music that mainly stimulates the mind when he's obviously aiming a little lower.

Track Listing 1. Sexxlaws
2. Nicotine & Gravy
3. Mixed Bizness
4. Get Real Paid
5. Hollywood Freaks
6. Peaches & Cream
7. Broken Train
8. Milk & Honey
9. Beautiful Way
10. Pressure Zone
11. Debra


Total time: 50:25

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