Beck
Modern Guilt
While Beck's year wasn't particularly a bad one--rumor has it that he's reached "clear" and won't be bothered by Thetans anymore--it wouldn't be too hard to imagine he wasn't in the best of moods. Modern Guilt is laced with a bit of the freaking out--"he's helpless","nothing" drops all over the place in the moody "Youthless; whereas "Walls" affects a sort of lilting pitch to his voice while he asks "What are you gonna do, when the bombs fall on you, falling down on you." No turntables, microphones, and no paper tigers either. Something went awry. Interestingly enough, Beck chose to produce the album in its entirety with Danger Mouse, and with the exception of "Chemtrails" and two Cat Power spots, everything you hear comes directly from those two men. While the clean obsession with texturirzed sound that Danger Mouse does with Gnarls Barkley is apparent, very little of the album spends any time in danger of producing the sort of one-off dance hits that Barkley pursues so fervantly, or that Beck did so well back on the Midnight Vultures album. Like Sea Change, this is melancholy Beck--but like Odelay, it's heavily produced Beck as well. The experience is a fascinating enough one on it's own, sure, but the more intense pleasures of the album come in the placement of it in the ever growing catalog of the guy who came up around the same time Radiohead did, back when MTV forced everybody to pay attention to both of them in the old school Buzz Bin rotation. Still up, still breathing, Modern Guilt may not be--don't tell Marty--Beck's best album ever, but it's far more rewarding than the repetitious Guero, and it certainly sounds like an album Beck is more invested in than The Information (a recording experience he has been quoted to describe as "painful.") For what it's worth, the world may still want another Odelay. Too bad for them--Beck clearly has more places to explore.
-Tucker Stone, 2008
PS. It can't go without saying that "Chemtrails," the only song on Modern Guilt to feature a musician who isn't a Beck or Mouse--it's been described as "epic" by just about anybody who has described it--justly so, as the song is a brilliant stroke, one of those songs so good it almost makes everything live in it's shadow. While it's basic conceit--lyrics focusing on the conspiracy theory that the contrails left by jets contain various biological agents--is one that probably appeals mostly to people who are really bored and/or are Scientologists, "Chemtrails" is still a warhorse of a song. Structured around Joey Waronker's drumming, Beck's love of organs and the bass guitar--along with the various bells and whistles Danger Mouse can contribute--it's one of the strongest single tracks of the year. If you can ignore the paranoid overdose of the lyrics--not too hard, as Beck's vocals are more a supplemental interest than a delivery system for language--than you're likely to find the song an exciting one to obsess yourself with.
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