Beck - The Information
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Music CD Cover
Artist: BeckEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-10-03
Music Label: Interscope Records
Soundtracks:
- Elevator Music
- Think I'm in Love
- Cellphone's Dead
- Strange Apparition
- Soldier Jane
- Nausea
- New Round
- Dark Star
- We Dance Alone
- No Complaints
- 1000BPM
- Motorcade
- The Information
- Movie Theme
- The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton
Free Music Notes for The Information
Free Music Review: Beck's Fourth Best Album!
Hit: 5 Stars
Rumor is on the street that Beck was deep in the mix on this project then abandoned it to release "Guero" instead. Next thing he knew, he was overseeing "Guerolito" and embroiled in a seemingly non-stop tour in support of both of those runaway projects.
It's no secret that while I enjoyed much of the music on "Guero", the whole thing smacked of a rush job, ultimately feeling more like a compilation of outtakes and b-sides than a truly new Beck album. Thankfully for the faithful Beck doesn't like to leave unfinished works lying around the studio for very long. Thus we are treated easily to the fourth home run in Mr. Hansen's career.
If I were to sum it up as neatly as a Christmas package wrapped by the Bloomingdale's gift center, then I would have to unabashedly exclaim that this is easily the best thing Beck has done other than "Odelay", "Mutations", and "Sea Change".
The most notable thing about "The Information" is that it's an album. It flows beautifully from start to finish, never causing you to extend your index finger to the fast-forward function. You will, undoubtedly, find yourself pressing replay and repeat for a number of the tracks, though. In fact, if you only had three songs to spend any amount of time with, I'd place my money on 'Think I'm in Love', 'Soldier Jane', and 'Dark Star'. Seriously, I've been slipping these into repeat for the past week, playing them over and over again until the combined elements of their melodic structure have synched in my cerebellum creating an airy mist of Beck intonation that drones on in endlessly hypnotical waves of bliss. What more could you ask for? Not much, I would reckon.
The aforemention tracks reverberate with loping basslines and Beck's dreamy baritone mumble and esoteric non-sequitors. If one were hard-pressed to name the heir apparent to Michael Stipe (legendary "Murmur"-era Stipe, mind you), then Beck would be the A-1 tip-top choice, hands down. For example, on 'Dark Star' Beck intones something akin to "Disappointment condition/A perfunctory prescription/Of an indigent mindset/A belligerent silence/We got all we need/Turning out of a tin can..." Besides that, these three songs illustrate a wonderfully succinct culmination of everything he's done prior, melding gentle funk atmospherics with snippets of blues squonk, folk rustication, and classic rock brilliance. Ah, you know what? That's more a description of the entire album, these tracks as well.
While the holy triumvirate I've ladled overflowing praise on are certainly worthy of the hype, the rest of the album is just as sweet. Whether it's the electro ping-pong shuffle of 'We Dance Alone,' the futuro shanty joust of 'Nausea,' the Janis Joplin inspired rolling thunder honky tonk revue stylings of 'Strange Apparition' or the lurch-n-grind sampledelia of '1000BPM,' Beck unleashes every trick in his bag and brings forth the ultimate culmination of his past experiments in stylistic convergence. It's as if he finally got a grip on his aural ADD, grabbing hold of all the diverse and often at odds with one another musical ideas bouncing around inside his cranium, rolled 'em all up in a giant rubber band ball and then spent countless hours sitting in a deck chair on his driveway while bouncing it against the garage door.
While tunes like 'Motorcade' and 'New Round' mix quaint elements of nursery rhyme inspired bed time lullabies and front porch folksiness, they still incorporate plenty of electronic blip and blurps, but all done in tasteful moderation. Meanwhile something like the bloated 'The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton,' which ends the album on a lengthy 10-minute and 36-second note, is like a wonderfully stilted post-post-post-modern re-examination of what prog rock might sound like as concocted by a cross-eyed, Tourette's suffering autistic genius.
To put it all in a succinctly bundled puch, try to imagine a piece of pink-to-ruby red Ahi Tuna seared just to perfection. If you could translate such an epicurean metaphor into a musical odyssey, then you'd most likely end up with "The Information". That said, I highly recommend that you get the 411 and that you get it from Beck his own bad self. Trust me, your head will be well fed.
Standouts:
"Elevator Music"
"Think I'm in Love"
"Soldier Jane"
"New Round"
"Dark Star"
"We Dance Alone"
The Information Poster
Hailed as "a deeply natural songwriter" (THE NEW YORKER) who "defies expectations in his own way" (TIME) and "Gen X's most famous absurdist" (BLENDER), BECK is the single most inventive and eclectic figure to emerge from the '90s alternative revolution. In an era obsessed with junk culture, Beck seamlessly blends pop, folk, hiphop, indie/underground and electronica with the end result being an authentically uncategorizeable musical style that nevertheless has sold millions of records and scored multiple Grammy awards.Three years in the making, THE INFORMATION is the album Beck began work on in 2003 with producer Nigel Godrich (Radiohead's OK Computer, Kid A; Beck's Sea Change, Mutations) and finally completed this year once Guero's massive success and encore touring engagements, as well as Nigel's other commitments, were fulfilled.
THE INFORMATION is comprised of 15 songs and a DVD featuring homemade videos for each of the 15 songs shot in-studio during the actual sessions. The artwork for The Information is either non-existent or infinite, depending on one's point of view. Each copy will come in a blank package with one of four collectible sticker sheets specially designed by European and American artists and representative of the unique Beck aesthetic. The stickers will give every Beck fan the opportunity to participate in the creative process by designing his or her own one of a kind CD cover.
On The Information, Beck Hansen is seriously bummed out. Not that he sounds it as much as he did on 2002's laconic, Fred Neil-worshipping Sea Change. Technology and stuff, and the way it gets in the way of human interaction, is the subtext if not the full-on concept at play here. Recorded with art-rock anal-retentive Nigel Goodrich at the helm, work began on this album not long after Sea Change but was shelved for a few years while Mr. Hansen made 2005's Guero with the Dust Brothers. Unsurprisingly, it sounds a bit like both of those. The trappings of minimalist pop, fuzzy folk, click-hop, hip-hop, baroque psychedelia, and funky pop are to be found on this endearing release. Like Jean Cocteau or David Bowie, Beck is an artistic chameleon whose greatest gift is knowing which artists to borrow from, and when. The cover artwork consists of stickers that you can arrange however you like, which perhaps appeals too much to your own nostalgic/retro, "Trapper Keeper" sensibilities. And yet, it's kind of awesome, something you can't believe has never been done before. Much like the album it adorns. --Mike McGonigal
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