Hi,

So I just reached out to Emily Lazar for a quote and discovered she mastered Beck's Colors. My first thought was, wow, I hate that album's sound. My second was, wow, I loved the previous albums Beck had mastered by Bob Ludwig.

Beck has all the money in the world. What happened there? Why leave Bob Ludwig and the genius sound of Morning Phase to have anything else?

And Colors won a best engineered Grammy! What?!

Lots of reasons to change mastering houses.

We use mastering house A because they have a deal with the label but when we are on the other label we use B because the other label has a deal with B.

We usually use mastering house A but we had to get something out on a tight schedule and A was backed up so we used B. 

We usually use mastering house A but we mixed to this unusual format and mastering house A doesn't have a machine for that handy.

We usually use mastering house A but we wanted also to release some copies on this unusual format and mastering house A doesn't have a lathe/bin machine/whatever for that format.

Also.. don't credit the sound of the album to the mastering engineer.
--scott

This was exactly what I wanted to say. Lots of things surrounding the production changed between Colors and the album that preceded it.

Are you aware that the Pro Tools file of one of the album's tracks was made freely available? Not even stems, but the full multitrack.

Maybe try giving that a listen, and see if the things you dislike are present, since it cuts mastering completely out of the picture. I'm sure you can find infinite DIY mastering jobs by aspiring engineers who played with the mix and mastering as well.

Emily and Bob are both engineers that any album would be lucky to be mastered by.

Bob is legend, but even he never got 3 album-of-the-year nominations in the same year.
Emily is the only one.
Just cause you don't like one album (which won her a Grammy) doesn't mean the entirety of the album sound is on her either.