Beck - Modern Guilt
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Beck - Modern Guilt
(Interscope, 2008)
3.5 out of 10
A friend and fellow Beck-listener grabbed a leak of Modern Guilt, and neither of us noticed the irony between title and situation until I began writing this review. One problem is that the phrase "modern guilt" isn't nearly evocative enough either on its own or with Beck's contextual guidance to make an impression but that it should mean something. Another problem can be summed up by my friend's reaction to listening to the first song and then glancing at the album's running time: "33 minutes of this?" Brevity can be the soul of wit, and yet in these modern, guilty times, 33 minutes can feel like a whole dull day.
Speaking of album titles: Sea Change turned out to be a more appropriate turn of phrase than folks might have expected. When Beck came out from the other side of that 2002 mopefest (of which I am a defender, it having been the appopriate soundtrack for many of my midnights-or-later at the time) three years later, the product — Guero — seemed less assured and more forced, like maybe he was working with the Dust Brothers and writing raps over samples of Mexican streetscapes 'cause that was the sort of thing he used to do. In fact, on Guero, Beck issued, as the opening track, his first truly awful song, a li'l hard-rock-hopper by the name of "E-Pro." In retrospect, maybe it wasn't all that different from "Devil's Haircut" (except it really was); nevertheless, I sure was and am kinda disgusted, and the rest of the album only mildly lived up to some of his previous dark pleasures and whimsical indulgences.
Two albums followed, one being 2006's The Information, produced by Nigel Godrich, written by Random Beck Song Generator and performed by a Beck impersonator. The second one is (fast forward to now) Modern Guilt, which sounds more like the guy as we knew him than anything since Mutations. It's also, by and large, a disastrous bore and his worst album.
I strongly admired Danger Mouse's work on The Grey Album (2004); this was, for those who forget, his Jay-Z bootleg using only White Album samples and, for those who slept, an improvement upon Jay-Z's original Black Album. But his ongoing tenure in Gnarls Barkley and his Damon Albarn productions (Gorillaz and The Good, the Bad & the Queen) have done nothing but suggest to me that Grey was a fluke of inspiration and that his normal tendencies are more towards the generic and/or too-kitschy. Modern Guilt further cements the Mouse's position miles out of league from anyone worth keeping tabs on. He butchers a couple of beats, particularly the obnoxiously awkward drum machine stabs on the title track, and, for the rest, gives us some drums and guitars signifying mainly that analog equipment was either used or simulated, and doesn't it just sound so fresh. "Chemtrails," the first song to have been net-premiered from Modern Guilt, is so musically and lyrically devoid of personality that the entire take-away is that of having listened to a drum solo.
Beck's songwriting and arrangement decisions can also, of course, be healthily implicated. Coming in at track seven out of 10, "Replica" is the one decent song on here, a relatively baroque respite played mostly by Mr. Hansen himself with an actually-good chopped-up beat by Danger Mouse, and even in this case you have to ignore Beck's sleep-singing. Sadly, the following tracks return to faring unwell on the front of musical stimulation. "Soul of a Man" sings us the eternal question — "What makes the soul of a man?" — over some interminable riffing and Beastie Boy-plodding from the "E-Pro" family. And "Profanity Prayers" has got a chorus that goes, "Who's gonna answer/ These profanity prayers?" This is nonsense, and not in the once-usual, deeply-inspired Beck fashion.
If you're the type of person who thinks the "worst Beck album" moniker could belong only to something like 1994's lo-fi, deliberately irreverent Stereopathetic Soulmanure, you and I probably listen to Beck for different reasons. I liked it when early Beck sounded like a slacker with boundless creativity, and I also liked it, in the late '90s, when he seemed to have decided he was actually among America's finest entertainers, and proved it with the masterpiece Midnite Vultures and its accompnaying tour. These days, he puts on shows where puppets enact the action simultaneously and the puppets get projected onto big screens. That plus the question "33 minutes of this?" both sound about right to me.
-Spencer Owen
Comments (10)
yikes. i'll have to listen for myself. but i haven't liked anything since sea change (which i loved). other reviewers disagree with you on this one. i'll comment back here after listening.
I wholeheartedly disagree. This is a great album. Another album where Beck sheds his skin and unveils another personality. It's a triumphant mix of Sea Change melodies with Guero/Information beats while adding a new layer not heard in any previous Beck albums (with help from Danger Mouse). The reasoning behind loving and admiring Beck is because with each album he changes styles and breaks new ground. Not many Beck fans that I know grab on to a single album to set the precident for future releases the way you have. Beck is like a rollercoaster ride. So just sit back and enjoy.
dbeck82- As I think you could actually infer from my piece, I'm a big fan of everything up through (i.e. including) Sea Change. I don't grab onto a single album to set any precedents; I grab onto every album as a precedent for everything that follows, because that tends to be a useful way to understand someone's career. Beck's past artistic success only influences my low opinion of this album in that it helpfully and relevantly, for my purposes, illustrates what's lacking.
What's the new layer you hear? I'm curious.
I'm in the middle on this. I might give it 4-5 out of 10.
My concern is that it feels generic, and previous Beck releases sounded like Beck on the first listen. Previous albums sounded, to me, crafted. This one seems plotted.
The 33 minute length, the title, the producer (who I like) all seem so contrived.
It's pleasant, but that about all I can say.
Haven't heard the album yet but wanted say I really enjoyed your careful and thoughtful analysis -- your style is a pleasure to read.
Gee, thanks, Ms. T!
Yeah whatever happend to the guy who said stuff like "smoke a pack of whiskey with Jesus Christ"? It's funny I was thinking to myself this morning why even write a post about Beck at all at this point. I have a list of people like this. Bjork, REM, The Cure, Radiohead, Bowie... I think there's this threshold that an artist passes where it's all been done and they're just trying to maintain some level of who they are. I wholehartedly agree with you on your thoughts about Sea Change and Geuro. I bought the Information but I still haven't given it a serious listen. I skimmed over it but it sounded to me like a deformed outtakes session of Guero. To me Geuro was ok at best. I think part of the problem is that it's hard to take his albums out of context and not compare them to the previous ones. He's one of those artists though that no matter what he puts out I'm still going to buy the album. I hate that. I keep buying the next one hoping he went crazy did a bunch of acid and recorded an experimental Gamelan album on a 4 track in Indonesia with a bunch of random musicians. Then I'll get this crazy elation that I felt in my late teens and all will be okay and I'll think "yeah he's still got it". I'm really waiting for that moment.
Insightful review, and I agree with you that this is the worst album ever. Fistula has an intersting point about artists passing a creativity threshold. But let's look at Beck's musical output. It is pretty astonishing how well he reinvented himself for so many albums without sounding like he was just making new sounds because he felt that he had to. I agree that The Information was written by Random Beck Song Generator, and so perhaps as a cohesive album it disappoints you, but look at it another way. It's pretty amazing that an artist can put out a "Greatest Hits" album that actually has no old material. I loved the fact that in Guero and Information Beck was able to revisit the entirety of his career in terms of the genres and sound pastiches he used yet still in the end, come up with fantastic songs with a touch of new flavors, but essentially using ingredients he already had in his spice cabinet. Perhaps Beck finally did run out of brand new ideas- can you blame him? I think anybody would be hard pressed to name another artist who has covered so much musical ground stylistically with so much success as Beck up to Guero. Which makes Modern Guilt such a massive disappointment. No one will be able to convince me that Beck actually tried to make this a good album. Everything about it points to this being a fulfillment of his contractual obligation. Whatever you feel about Guero and The Information, you must admit that they were skillfully crafted, that a huge effort was put into them. Mostly I'm referring to the music, but I could also point to the "extras": bonus DVDs with videos for every song, deluxe book for Guero, stick on artwork for Information. After such monumental releases, Modern Guilt has the feeling of being the record Beck threw away in the dumpster outside the studio that a homeless man looking for food happened upon and took to a bootlegger, who subsequently pirated it with cheap artwork and shoddy replication.
i liked your review, i just bought the album so will have to see for myself. i did feel like the last two albums sounded so much the same that they should have been one album! i am a big fan of one foot in the grave, sea change and mutations, the latter not loved by many i think.
oh, and i hated that timebomb song. whatever album that was on = yuck.