Before Morning Phase came around, it was easy to look at Mutations and Sea Change as something of companion albums. They were the two Nigel Godrich collaborations, the two acoustic-based, more somber singer-songwriter works. Mutations falls in a strange intersection of Beck’s career. It was recorded in two weeks and initially intended for release on an the indie label Bong Load Records, until his label Geffen interfered, then decided it wasn’t a smart commercial move to bill this as the “official” follow-up to Odelay, and proceeded to give Mutations some strange, quiet release. Whatever, the fact remains that Mutations came next after Odelay, won a Grammy, and wound up as one of the best albums Beck has yet to release.

Mutations is another one of the Beck albums that it’s not uncommon to hear referred to as his best. It also came around during what might be the man’s creative, most unpredictable peak: the shared ethos of Odelay and Guero bracketing an almost ten year period in which there’d be the series of left turns of Mutations into Midnite Vultures into Sea Change. But where on the surface it’d be kind of easy to lump Mutations and Sea Change in together because they both have a lot of acoustic guitars and were both produced by Godrich, that does a disservice to how different all these works were from another. Mutations, in some ways, actually echoes the folk, blues, and country elements that were lost in the gross mess of Golden Feelings andStereopathetic Soulmanure, or that appeared in a much lower-fi form on One Foot In The Grave. In a weird way, Mutations was a surprising left turn from the styles favored on the blockbuster Odelay, but it was a left turn that did have roots in where Beck had been before. The difference, this time around, was that the folk was, uh, actually produced and generally maintained a vaguely psychedelic character. It’s all a far cry from the heavy despair and orchestration of Sea Change. You can hear this was an album cranked out, by a band, in two weeks. And you can hear that, while this could arguably be the first totally cohesive “Serious Beck” record since his ascension, there’s still a lot of wit and smirk to Mutations compared to Sea Change or Morning Phase. What’s telling about returning to something like Mutations a year after Morning Phase, though, is that while the “Beck sound” would be attributed to Odelay and the albums in its vein, it’s these strands of folk and country that have been the most persistent in the man’s career. Mutations was the first time he really let this stuff out into the light, and the fried, wry collection that resulted remains a career highlight.