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| Modern Guilt | 
 enlarge | Artist: Beck
Label: Interscope Records
Category: Music
List Price: $13.98
Buy New: $8.76
You Save: $5.22 (37%)
New (51) Used (18) from $6.52
Avg. Customer Rating:  96 reviews
Sales Rank: 279
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.4
UPC: 602517754416
EAN: 0602517754416
ASIN: B0019GAOI2
Release Date: July 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 (really 3.5 stars) Lovely and weird psych-folk record July 8, 2008
9 out of 18 found this review helpful
Both Beck and DJ Danger Mouse can be acquired tastes. The former's experimentation fusing multiple genres of music together can come off as novelty to some; the latter's out-there work with Cee-Lo Green as Gnarls Barkley can do the same.
But they're also both capable of working magic, as evidenced by Beck's previous effort, The Information as well as Danger Mouse's genius pairing of Jay-Z and the Beatles on The Grey Album and his expert sonic backdrops as one half of DangerDoom on The Mouse and the Mask.
Additionally, there's little doubt that both could be the co-editors at Obscure Music Quarterly (props to sports reporter The Jeff Mitchell for that one), so it should come as little surprise that when they got together to compare notes on their favorite old-school psychedelic rock, the result would be a lovely and weird psych-folk record that doesn't sound immediately like either artist.
On first listen, Modern Guilt seems like what would have happened if Beck and company had recorded The Information with a lot more acoustic instruments and reverb. The tight, thickly-layered harmonies of Information's "Strange Apparition" feature prominently, and the melancholy-future-paranoid vibe is still firmly in place.
And like much of Beck's other work, the old coexists anachronistically alongside the new: the skittery drum-and-bass percussion with the otherwise lilting "Replica"; square-wave synthesizer fills with the chugging title track. But several songs are straight-ahead band numbers, with minimal tinkering on Danger Mouse's part: the haunting, conspiracy-theory "Chemtrails," the stomping "Soul of a Man," and the surf-music-on-a-bad-acid-trip "Gamma Ray."
And while Modern Guilt is easily Beck's most mature-sounding record - one could make an argument for Sea Change, however - it's still a bit tricky making sense of his lyrics ("Trying to hold/Hold out for now/With these ice caps melting down/With the transistor sound and my Chevrolet terraplane /Going round, round, round/Come a little gamma ray /Standing in a hurricane /Your brains are bored /Like a refugee /From the houses burning /And the heat wave's calling your name," from "Gamma Ray"). It's best to just enjoy the imagery, and the subtle touches of '60s psychedelia sprinkled throughout the record work well with Beck's stream-of-consciousness wordplay, as well as give it a rootsier sound that could just as easily appeal to boomers as to their children.
Danger Mouse seems to bring out an excellent side in whoever he's working with, whether it's Cee-Lo, the Black Keys or MF Doom. While it may not be Beck's best album, Modern Guilt is a very enjoyable step in yet another slightly new direction.
 Borderline Garbage (2 stars) July 16, 2008
8 out of 14 found this review helpful
I'm not really sure what Beck's deal has been in recent years, but this album may be one of his most forgettable albums I've ever heard. The album is so spacey it feels pretentiously apathetic. You can barely understand most of Beck's distorted mumbling on this record. Danger Mouse has come through with some of the most bland and least engaging production I've heard from him yet. At times, it feels like a mediocre Radiohead rip-off. Beck used to be one of my absolute favorite artists; it pains me to hear him release such an uninspired effort. If this album isn't proof that his hey-day has long passed, I don't know what is.
Modern Primitive July 13, 2008
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
This album makes me wonder what Sea Change would have sounded like if Beck had a late mood swing and remixed it. Like that great album, Beck is in a foul mood again, and looking at the world through a slacker-adult's cocked eye. "Youthless" is a prime example. A mournful song at the core, Danger Mouse clutters it with so much business that it's difficult to catch the underlying depression inherent in the lyric. The final song, the slow building "Volcano," has him creeping closer to a deadly fire, but claiming all he wants to do is "warm his old bones."
The first three songs flow like a suite, with "Orphans," "Chemtrails" and "Gamma Rays" (with its cool flute samples) playing out like an existential mid-life crisis. The old Mellow Gold "Loser" isn't just asking you to kill him, he's contemplating what comes after. There are "sinking boats" and "swallowed by evil" and "feeling so cold when I'm at home" all sucking you into his blackest place.
At the same time, the rat-a-tat production of Danger Mouse leads one to wonder just how wild Beck must have been about Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere, because "Crazy" seems to have informed a great deal of "Modern Guilt." Beck's guilt may be old hat, but the sounds are pure new century. The title track and "Soul of a Man" are both peppy and ominous, ala "Crazy," with "Profanity Prayers" hitting fever pitch before "Volcano" slows things at the finish.
With almost 15 years since "Loser" put this free associating jester on the map, Beck has now eased into a graceful middle age. "Modern Guilt" is a thoroughly adult record, a folk rant for the new century.
 Beck evolves on newest album to create 'Modern' masterpiece August 15, 2008
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
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.
The Slump Continues August 20, 2008
6 out of 10 found this review helpful
Beck's musical slump continues. It's really a tragedy because he was on such a prolific ride with every album he released from 1994 and 1996's modern classics "Mellow Gold" and "Odelay," respectively, to 1998's stunning off-roader "Mutations," on to 1999's eclectic grower "Midnite Vultures," and finally to his career's pinnacle, 2002's depressingly beautiful "Sea Change". The gossip around "Sea Change" was the love of his life broke his heart and out came his most raw, honest and ingenious work of art. It also drained him of everything he had left. Since then, Beck has struggled to create anything that can touch the greatness of any of his previous work.
This year's "Modern Guilt" continues to see the decline of Beck and it really saddens me. I saw Beck on his "Sea Change" tour at Wolf Trap and it was one of the best shows I've ever seen. He was ON and his band really helped carry him. Fast-forward a few years later to 2005's "Guero" tour at The Patriot Center and it was like night and day. Beck could barely perform the last half of his set. He didn't even MOVE. His stage hands had to switch his guitars on and off him, step on his effects pedals for him, and basically act as his crutch just to get him through. There was no encore which is unheard of for a headliner. That's the feeling and impression I get with Beck's latest albums and now with "Modern Guilt"...he's just barely getting by and simply fulfilling his contractual obligations.
Not that there aren't some diamonds in the rough here (certainly not his best songs ever, but they're relatively good), such as "Orphans," "Gamma Ray" and title track "Modern Guilt," but the bus stops there. The remaining seven tracks meander off into cruise control, letting producer DJ Danger Mouse seemingly take full control thereby giving "Modern Guilt" a disappointingly un-Beck feel. What is the Beck feel you ask? Listen to the range of experimentation going on with every album before "Guero": boldly diving into multiple genres with a keen ear for melody, funk, folk, and mischievousness. Beck doesn't seem to be having fun anymore, not that "Sea Change" was a fun album...far from it, but it had soul. That's what's lacking from post-Sea Change Beck for me and I really want him back. Snap out of it, buddy. Please.
Highlight tracks: 1) Orphans, 2) Gamma Ray, and 4) Modern Guilt
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