Beck – I Won’t Be Long

And we won’t be enthusiastic…

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[5.33]John Seroff: I know it’s hardly the only song to put so much weight on that simple hook, but I can’t stop hearing “I Won’t Be Long” as a gloss on Cathy Davey’s “Little Red,” and not as an improvement at that. A disappointing degree of Beck’s current era of radio-friendly projects, this new single included, feel more like a soft shade of gloomy idea than a fully-developed answer. I much prefer the less accessible but more puckish experimentation of Sound Shapes, Song Reader, or Record Club to this recent run of wan, forgettable adult contemporary.
[5]

Katherine St Asaph: Everyone’s going to absentmindedly sing something else over this: for me it was “see my name, see my name on the wall…” It’s the chords, but also the spacey, drifty quality. Which can be rather pleasant, for what it is.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Whenever Beck slips into his spacesuit and floats in a most peculiar way through the cosmos, he sounds like an idiot or worse. Ten years after Sea Change persuaded fans that he was more poignant being serious, he’s at it again, with the faintest of pulses.
[3]

Patrick St. Michel: Beck’s planning on releasing an extended version of this, too. It has its moments (the channel-hopping middle) but, man, not nearly enough going on here to warrant five minutes, let alone more than that.
[5]

Brad Shoup: See, it’s funny cos the main version is over five minutes, and the extended version is nearly thrice that. It’s blissy! Hard-rubber bass and clipped guitar push the chords, and once that starts to wear, some bog-standard synth flutter is added. There’s also a strange edit around the 3:00 mark, as if Beck couldn’t join two takes at different tempi. The best part is next, as clarion guitars twinkle sour and sweet in the Echoplex, the kickdrum does a hushed death metal tribute, and vocals drift away. This would all be very nice — not to mention a fine hint for Daft Punk’s next LP — if it weren’t for the man himself, who is 50/50 with the nonsense and just abysmal at the straight stuff. (Sea Change was… not good, y’all.) Luckily, the titular sentiment is more or less foolproof, though I wish he’d fooled around with it more.
[6]

Anthony Easton: Beck’s best talent is not mimicry, and it is not bricolage (though he does both things very well, and often in conjunction; this is an excellent example of that) but a kind of over-reaching distance. In fact, I wonder if this inability to fully commit without personae might explain the effectiveness of his theatrical gesture. Extra point for the fade out coda.
[7]