Beech’s doubling of the bombast of power doesn’t have the safety-catch of the irony/sincerity get out clause that has characterised so much of this recent work. Skewered on the relentless progress of power, that axis of innocence looks like a last, fatal straw to be grasped at in an effort to maintain a dubious claim for the final authority of a subject that knows what it is doing but which, like Elvis in Vegas (another site for Beech’s longstanding enquiries into the prosaic mechanisms of power), has already left the building. Recalling Oswald Spengler, another of Beech’s references, the repetition of power that nonetheless drains out its seductive image is extolled not so much as a signal of the Decline of the West but its continuing success in keeping us ready, geared up for more of its enlivening, individualizing, dizzying assault.