Beck

Beck
Manchester Apollo, Sunday 27th April 2003

Set List: Pay No Mind; guess I’m Doing Fine; It’s All In Your Mind; Cancelled Check; Lost Cause; Do You Realise??; Already Dead; The Golden Age; Tropicalia; We Live Again; Little One; Lonesome Tears ; Nicotine & Gravy; Fourteen Rivers Fourteen Floods; hollow Log; Ship In A Bottle; Sunday Sun; Nobody’s Fault But My Own; Round The Bend; Loser; One Foot In The Grave; Sunday Morning.

Edinburgh, London and tonight Manchester were the only places that the UK could see Beck promote his latest album ‘Sea Change’. The album much more introspective than his previous major label releases and the delivery is very stripped down – gone are the samples of ‘Odelay’, gone are the styling’s of Prince on ‘Midnite Vultures’. This is very much a return to his earlier work, with a dash of Nick Drake thrown in.

It was a set reflected the stripped down nature of the album, with no support and no band. Beck took to the stage backed by varying types of guitars, beat boxes and Keyboards.

The set featured heavily the songs from his latest work and was greeted by an almost reverential hush that descended once the first chord was struck and only lifted at the end of the song to applaud the songs. He won the crowd over from the first chord of the night and he rewarded them with almost two hours of music.

Interspersed in between the music was an amusing and engaging banter that was almost as good as the music that everyone had come to see. Fans probably longed to see him with the full set and exploring his full repertoire, but they couldn’t grumble at tonight’s performance.

His choices of covers were interesting to say the least. The Flaming Lips’ – ‘Do You Realise??’ was expertly delivered, Justin Timberlake’s – ‘Cry Me A River’ was started but never finished, but even the intro was greeted by the warmest of applauses.

‘Tropicalia’ the song from a life Less Ordinary was given an airing and stripped down with only the beat box for backing the song sounded right for tonight’s proceedings.

Not even a few technical problems could ruin Beck’s flow - a swift kick to the offending keyboard solved the problem. ‘Loser’ was the last song of the night and the rapturous applause almost shook the roof off.

He came back on to do ‘One Foot In the Grave and finished the set with the Velvet Underground classic ‘Sunday Morning’.
Two hours of fantastic music sent those home that witnessed this event satisfied and looking forward to seeing Beck return in the very near future with or without the band.