Beck

Given his reputation as the world's favourite slacker, Beck has been incredibly busy during the past couple of decades. While 1994's "Loser" funnelled chunky breakbeats, wobbly sitar lines, and incredibly bizarre rhymes into an anthem we can all agree upon, every album since has skipped over and across genre lines, from the trash-compacted samples of Odelay — as produced by the Dust Brothers, the dynamic duo best known for the Beastie Boys' equally adored Paul's Boutique — to the psych-steeped paranoia of Modern Guilt, a postmodern psych-pop album that just so happens to have Danger Mouse — the beat-chopping half of Gnarls Barkley — behind the boards. And then there are the really random detours that have dotted Beck's entire career, as heard throughout our Next Steps.

Sea Change (2002), Beck's gloomy but gorgeous break-up record, shouldn't have come as such a head-turning surprise. After all, the queasy soundscapes and bloodletting lyrics of "Nobody's Fault But My Own" suggested his dark side just four years earlier. The only problem is that we forgot about it the second Beck revealed Midnite Vultures, a falsetto-flexing journey into a world where neon signs point the way to Prince, ultra-modern funk, and robotic R&B. Taking such a deep-end dive would seem forced in the hands of most artists; in Beck's musical playground, however, Midnite Vultures is yet another mind-boggling sonic journey from alt-rock's reigning showman. Tying all these left turns together is our Deep Cuts section: a compendium of Beck's best oddities and collectibles.

Seeking out strange or unexpected tracks by Beck is hardly a difficult task — after all, he approaches his creative task with a habitually skewed and fresh view of the world — and here you'll find a bunch of lesser known, bonus and non-album material . . . a fuzz-blues, juice boosted version of Bob Dylan's "Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat" from the first volume of the War Child Heroes charity album; several keen blasts from the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack, including "We Are Sex Bob-Omb" with regular production cohort Nigel Godrich (aka the sixth member of Radiohead); and the one-off alt superstar get-together "Do They Know It's Hallowe'en?" which reached Number Four on the Canadian charts in 2005.

Considering his grandfather's work with Yoko Ono and John Cage, his father's reputation as a cutting-edge strings arranger, and his mother's years spent hanging out at Andy Warhol's Factory, Beck was destined to be cooler than all of us put together. Not only that — he was born to perform music that challenges us as much as himself. Simply put, you never know what you're going to get with a Beck record; one minute he's happier than a clown who's just quaffed a pint of laughing gas — the fearless, genre-mashing brilliance of Odelay, the prankster pop of Midnite Vultures, and the full-circle connect-the-dots cuts of Guero and The Information — and the next he's clawing his way out of a hole caused by misunderstandings and missed opportunities — the widescreen love songs of Sea Change. Regardless, he's still Beck, and we wouldn't have it any other way.