Let Doctor Hansen Rock You

“How d’ya like me now?” Beck called out.

Most of the crowd were familiar only with the hits, so it was unlikely that they even knew that the song was a slightly obscure, decade-old track called “Beercan”. Much less that the proper answer to that spoken-word question, presented in the middle of the first verse, is “Pretty good!”

But Beck didn’t mind. He gave the third part of the call-and-response section, anyway: “Going on, feeling strong!” Ten years ago, those words had an ironic tone, poking fun at jock jams and new age self-help tapes. But now, oddly enough, they rang true. And that was beautiful.

“Beercan” was one of the emblematic “slacker-raps” from Beck’s 1994 album, “Mellow Gold.” He played it early on in his thrilling set at the Bank of America Pavilion last Thursday, with microphone held high and confidence in his voice.

The show managed to be everything his March album, “Guero,” should have been: Where the album felt like a lazy rehash of Beck’s tried-and-true genre-hopping, the show was a post-post-post-post-modern regurgitation of a regurgitation of a million musical genres, spewed out with equal parts wild abandon and focused control. It was a post-Scientology, ultra-relaxed Beck doing an amazing impression of Beck. And he knew how to rock a body.

Guero’s “Black Tambourine” kicked it all off. Bassist Dan Rothchild thumped with premonition while Beck gently swayed in shaggy clothes and a floppy hat that could have been in some futurist version of the Rolling Thunder Revue. Then Justin Stanley’s guitars galloped in and out-of-control hype-man Ryan Faulkner pranced around like…well, like Beck, circa 1996.

The band was shambolic, but they all knew exactly what they were doing. A mix-master was present, but he wasn’t cross-fading wax, he was morphing DVDs to blast through images of cityscapes and unintelligible icons on the overhead screen. The first third of the show was a complete sensory overload, and the crowd couldn’t get enough.

Stage antics abounded as well. Near the end of the set, Beck announced that a dinner party would be taking place on stage, and sure enough, the band sat down at a makeshift table and ate while the man played a lovingly acoustic rendition of the ridiculous sex jam “Debra”.

He paid tribute to fellow artist/prankster R. Kelly by shouting that he was “trapped in the closet” and asking us, “What does ‘TP-3’ even mean?” Eventually the band started clinking their plates and glasses in rhythm, and the dinner party became some mutated version of recent B-side “Clap Hands.” Some of the assembled masses did more than clap their hands, though, as Beck invited at least a dozen random crowd members onstage to dance through “E-Pro” and “Get Real Paid” in the encore.

The show had its low points—almost all of Beck’s folksier, down-tempo songs like “The Golden Age” and “Lonesome Tears” put a damper on the general party vibe. But in each of those cases, he would do something odd and new—like singing a new melody line or having his band do a hoedown clap-stomp behind him—to remind us that this was still a process of experimentation and entertainment.

And sure, Beck did seem a bit disinterested at times. But maybe that’s not the right word. He was comfortable. It all seemed effortless for him. He let Faulkner do the ridiculous stuff, and conserved his energy for transcendent moments like the breakdown in the middle of “Where It’s At,” during which his eyes focused, and he informed us that he was “gonna count it down, and then we’re gonna jump.” Four. Three. Two. One. And thousands were airborne. “There’s a destination, a little up the road…”

Ten years ago, he used a leaf-blower on stage to get the audience’s attention. In the lyrics of “Beercan,” Beck declares, “I quit my job blowing leaves,” and it seems like he finally has. There was still plenty of performance art, but none of it was frantic, and none of it felt forced. The fatherhood, the religion, the aging—it’s only turned Beck into someone who knows how to relax and be an expert performer. Not a faker, not an imitator, and not a producer of artifice. A musicmaker. A dreamer of dreams. Or something.

—Staff writer Abe J. Riesman can be reached at riesman@fas.harvard.edu.