Beck and Danger Mouse make a good team. For his tenth album, king weirdo genre-bender Beck Hansen has shed his major label shackles, going the indie route from whence he came, and it’s clear in every note of Modern Guilt that he’s excited about the freedom. For the first time in… shit, in nearly a decade, Beck’s put together an album that feels like a complete piece of work. And it’s good. Like, really good.
You can check out first single Chemtrails on Beck’s MySpace page. When I heard the song, my first instinct was fuck this. After last year’s one-off party jam Time Bomb, I’d prepared myself for a dance-rock album, full of jittery beats and the crazy nonsense jackoff lyrics Beck’s known for. But this? This was some weird tripped out sixties hippie jam shit that didn’t translate. It was like Beck took way too much acid, decided he only wanted to sing in layered falsetto harmonies from here on out and ran off through a hazy-sunlit field. After a minute or two, I moved on. As far as I was concerned, it was shit. Modern Guilt was bound to disappoint.
I was wrong. The guy with the new wave bionic jumpsuit who’s been getting us into his rhythm with biochemical jism for almost 20 years has just made the best album of his career. Mr. Brian Burton has brought out the best in Beck by boiling his kaleidoscope of quirky ideas down to the best and strongest few- and running like hell with them. The record is an experiment in classic pop psych-rock, coming out somewhere between what the Beatles and Pink Floyd would’ve sounded like if they all took ecstasy, went to a drum n’ bass show, then headed to Brian Wilson’s house to record.
The schticky weirdo metaphors are still in full effect on Modern Guilt, but for once they don’t override the vibe. Atmosphere takes the wheel on this one, and you can listen to all 33 minutes without that tugging feeling inside that Beck’s still stuck in middle-age cruise control. There’s no shotgun-chewing sad acoustic breakup songs, no rehashing of the over-animated weirdo vibes. This is the real shit.
The beauty of Chan Marshall’s subtle backups are littered on the record, surfacing with hypnotic poignance on the excellent Orphans- particularly on the line fighting the fire with your bare hands. The delivery of that one line is quite possibly the most gorgeous moment of the entire album, and I’ve got three new Cat Power records because of it.
Don’t be fooled by the slow psychedelic, outstretched-arms-on-the-hillside vibe of Chemtrails- it’s a bizarrely awesome track that grows on you, with a rising sound that’s buoyed by crash-heavy percussion. Mr. Hansen finally reveals just how much stylistic self-restraint the song requires after the false ending, where the returning fade-in erupts like thrashing live wires of the song, unraveling and blinking out in an instant (just as shit was really getting interesting). You get the feeling on this track that both Beck and Danger Mouse are indulging in a little guilty pleasure here.
The title track has all the hepcat cool Beck’s flirted with since his first record, but never took the full leap to until now. Another album highlight is the stoner love-fest Replica, a breakbeat-laden percussive ode to Björk’s Hunter. This is the closest you’ll ever hear the man sounding like Thom Yorke, so enjoy it. But while we’re on topic, Profanity Prayers manages to capture the very best of what Radiohead’s done in the past few years, but Beck’s a lot more to the point- the fuzz bass-driven sanguine groove builds to an army of handclaps and back, dissolving to an acoustic jam breakdown before coming back full-circle.
Youthless is Beck at his most confident stride, even though the intro is a hilariously unintentional but nearly identical match to Bloodhound Gang’s No hard Feelings. Despite all that, the song’s uptempo sunglasses-at-night sense of cool possesses echoes of Cellphone’s Dead, the impossibly perfect bodyrocker jam off The Information. When it comes to Mr. Hansen, lines like this life it goes by fast / treading water in the past shouldn’t necessarily be taken for granted. Every once in a while the guy comes off like Dylan’s weirdo alien folk-hop cousin. Then again, you might be hard-pressed to find a deeper existential meaning to songs like Satan Gave Me A Taco, but that was a long time ago.
Album closer Volcano is one of the prettiest pieces Beck has put together since the dreamy beauty of Beautiful Way. I’ve been drifting on this wave so long / I don’t know if it’s already crashed on the shore / was it all an illusion / or a mirage gone bad? For once in a long time, Beck, it’s not a mirage. And it’s all good. We just wish it didn’t have to end so soon.
Modern Guilt
July 8, 2008
XL Records
1. Orphans
2. Gamma Ray
3. Chemtrails
4. Modern Guilt
5. Youthless
6. Walls
7. Replica
8. Soul Of A Man
9. Profanity Prayers
10. Volcano
July 3rd, 2008 at 4:02 PM
Beck is in the exact same boat as Radiohead. A darling of every rock critic, always “saving rock n roll” with each release, and never deserving of any of it. It’s all bullshit.
Sure, “Loser” was a fun song 900 years ago. So was “Creep”. I’m over both of them.
July 10th, 2008 at 8:46 PM
Joseph Rose: Beck is smarter than you. Get over yourself.
July 11th, 2008 at 6:00 AM
I will say I saw Beck when he came to Nashville several years ago promoting his new album. Ive been to a whole lotta small concerts, and this was the best show Ive ever been to thus far. Im buying it.