Beck - Modern Guilt
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Music CD Cover
Artist: BeckEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2008-07-08
Music Label: Interscope Records
Product features:
- BECK MODERN GUILT
- Orphans
- Gamma Ray
- Chemtrails
- Modern Guilt
- Youthless
- Walls
- Replica
- Soul of A Man
- Profanity Prayers
- Volcano
Free Music Notes for Modern Guilt
Free Music Review: Beck evolves on newest album to create 'Modern' masterpiece
Hit: 5 Stars
Musical chameleon Beck released his latest album, "Modern Guilt," on his 38th birthday and the songs found therein display an artist far removed from the 23-year-old Los Angeles slacker who was telling us he was 'un perdedor' on "Mellow Gold," his 1994 breakthrough release. This disc finds Mr. Hansen truly exploring the heavy themes of death and personal reflection for the first time, and the results are nothing short of stellar. Middle age, it seems, has its benefits.
Beck tried this feat, the "serious record," two years ago on 2006's "The Information," but the message was pretty much lost to critics and fans, who thought the filtered-through-a-ColecoVision beats and lyrics about cellular phones were more post-apocalyptic and self-referential than anything else. He gets straight to the point this time around, with 10 concise tracks, a 34-minute runtime and not an ounce of leftover ideas to clutter the proceedings.
To the delight of fans the world over, Beck enlisted Danger Mouse (Brian Burton), the reigning critical darling of the music-production world, to man the boards on "Modern Guilt." They make an excellent team, what with their shared taste for `60s psychedelic rock, twitchy percussion and looped string samples -- not to mention their impeccable ear for catchy riffs. The surf-rock bass line that serves as the backbone for "Gamma Ray" makes it the closest approximation to a pop song Beck has written in years.
Perhaps tired of hearing that his last two records were trying too hard to be "Odelay 2.0," Beck has dialed back his use of left-field audio samples and bits of obscure and forgotten songs from decades past, choosing instead to interpret those influences and recreate them as fairly straightforward rock tunes. People seem to forget that, if you ignore the space-cowboy production flourishes that saturate every last inch of Beck's late-`90s output, he was -- and still is -- one of the most prolific singer-songwriters of the last 25 years.
Of course, it wouldn't be a true Beck album if he didn't make room in his lyrics for a full notebook's worth of wacky one-liners and vaguely interpretable philosophical musings. The churning "Soul of a Man" finds our hero spitting out non sequiturs as if he made them up a few seconds before walking into the recording booth. "Beat my bones against the wall/Put a bank note on your bond/Gris-gris and a goldenrod/Deep down in a hollow log," goes one verse, the words apparently chosen for no reason other than to meet the song's syllabic needs.
"Chemtrails," the slow and dreamy lead single, addresses the urban legend that the vapor trails from commercial airliners contain chemicals that, once they fall to Earth and are inhaled by an unaware populace, allow the government to control us. (Sample lyric: "You and me hit by a test of white evil/Watching the jet planes go by") Now, that may just be the Scientology talking, but the fact remains that "Chemtrails" is one of the most beautifully composed Beck ballads in recent memory.
Prior to the release of "Modern Guilt," there was a lot of excited chatter over the news that soul singer Cat Power (Chan Marshall) would be making a cameo appearance on two of the album's tracks, "Orphans" and "Walls," but her contributions are so incidental (and not to mention barely audible) that I think mentioning them four-fifths of the way through my review will suffice.
The most notable aspect of "Modern Guilt," in my opinion, is that it is the first Beck album since 1999's "Midnite Vultures" to not have a single clunker on it. Perhaps they were crafted that way, to get in and out in less than four minutes each and leave you wanting more. And there's no guilt in that, modern or otherwise.
Modern Guilt Poster
Beck's new album Modern Guilt, produced with Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton, will be released July 8, 2008.The new album contains 10 new songs, and with the exception of last year's Grammy-nominated, digital-only single "Timebomb", Modern Guilt is the first new material Beck has written since the prolific stretch that produced 2005's platinum Guero and 2006's universally acclaimed The Information.
Modern Guilt is a tightly assembled group of songs that range in lyrical tone from introspection and social commentary to off the cuff wordplay and lighthearted humor. Musically, the album's ten tracks vacillate between economy and experimentation, hybrid and pop classicism, while consistently manifesting Beck and Danger Mouse's shared interest in psych-rock, folk, electronic minimalism and orchestration.
Beck is about to embark on a tour of the UK and Europe, followed by a number of US headline and festival appearances, culminating in Beck's biggest hometown headline show to date, September 20, 2008 at the Hollywood Bowl.
Beck Photos
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In the last few years, Beck has freely sailed the seas of electronic and alternative music, but he is now back on land with Modern Guilt, an album that gravitates mostly toward electronic music and that, unfortunately, only has a couple of songs that really stand out ("Modern Guilt," "Orphans"). The problem has nothing to do with the fact that this CD is more electronic than acoustic. The sound is poor, and it sounds as if Beck were actually singing out of a barrel. Also, the beat doesn?t change from one song to the next, and if you don?t listen carefully to each song, you could not tell when tracks change. Despite Beck being one of the most creative and versatile musicians in recent years, the songs of this album have no depth. Let?s just hope that Beck surprises with his next. --Ernesto Sánchez (People en Español
) En los últimos años, Beck ha navegado libremente por las aguas de las música electrónica y la alternativa, ahora está regreso al mundo de la música con Modern Guilt, un disco que se inclina más hacia la música electrónica y que desgraciadamente sólo tiene un par de canciones que se destacan como "Modern Guilt" y "Orphans." Y el problema no tiene nada que ver con el hecho de que sea un disco más electrónico que acústico, el sonido del disco es muy pobre, pareciera que Beck está cantando dentro de una cubeta, y el beat no parece cambiar de una canción a la otra. Si no se pone extrema atención a cada canción no se dará cuenta del momento en que cambian los tracks. Si bien Beck es uno de los músicos más creativos y versátiles de los últimos años hay que decir que este es un disco en el que los temas carecen de profundidad. Esperemos que Beck realmente nos sorprenda con su siguiente producción. --Ernesto Sánchez (People en Español )
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