In his suicide note, Kurt Cobain quoted a Neil Young lyric: “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.” It’s Beck, though, who—by doing neither—has more truly embodied the slacker spirit of Generation X and also, incidentally, of the tireless Baby Boomer who wrote that lyric.

I was a freshman in college in 1993 when my roommate came home with a free promo single featuring Beck’s breakout anthem “Loser.” I was unimpressed with the loping chorus: “I’m a loser, baby, so why don’t you kill me?”

But I kept hearing about that wacky bastard, and his critical reputation continued to grow. Odelay (1996) is on just about every list of the best albums of the 90s, and given that I’ve never been a huge Beck fan, I was surprised by how familiar many of its songs are. I also revisited Midnite Vultures (1999), at the recommendation of Tangential contributor Matt Beachy: “Odelay was a much more acclaimed album, but Vultures will put a boomerang in your pants.”

Sure, Vultures is more shagadelic—but it’s still very Beck, laconic and elliptical, with lyrics like “buried animals call your name/ you keep on sleeping through the poignant rain.” Really, it’s more bongo drums in your pants than a boomerang.

I respect Beck’s skills, and I appreciate his significance as the 90s’ quintessential chameleon, sauntering around from one style to another like it doesn’t really matter where he lays his head. There’s a winning authenticity to Beck, and he’s remained a critics’ darling—scoring most notably with his acclaimed 2002 album Sea Change, which stripped away most (though not all) of the stylistic flourishes in favor of a spare acoustic sound, bringing Beck’s gift for melody to the fore.

The best thing Pitchfork’s William Morris has to say about Odelay is that “it won some cool” for everyone who listened. See, that’s the thing: though I won’t say no to cool if it comes my way, I don’t feel like I need to go in search of cool. I’d rather search out thrills and intense emotions, even if they’re not very cool. (My all-time favorite movie, for example, is Return of the Jedi, rather than the indisputably cooler Empire Strikes Back.)

So for me Beck will never be a go-to; I wouldn’t avoid him, but I wouldn’t seek him out, either. Next time he comes to town, I’ll probably go check him out if I don’t have anything else going on. That seems like an appropriately Gen-X approach to take with this trippy troubadour.

– Jay Gabler

The 1990s Project is my attempt to give the decade’s music a fair shot at disproving my offhand assessment that the 90s were the armpit of modern musical history. My goal is to visit, or revisit, 100 of the decade’s most acclaimed, popular, and/or interesting albums. Here’s the road map.