Beck "The Information" Review

The Future Beckons
Album Review by
Scott Bolohan Staff Writer

Beck has always been a musical chameleon. He weaves in and out of genres and personas with each new album. From slacker to 70’s disco star, from rapper to heartbroken folk singer, Beck has always managed to create new and unexpected sounds. On The Information, Beck has, more so than ever, managed to take the listener on surprising twists and turns, all while arriving at a way to bring the fun back into buying a CD in the digital music era.

With The Information, Beck has embraced the 21st century. He leaked tracks on his website and video clips on MySpace well before the albums release. Upon picking up the actual CD, the first noticeable thing is the blank album cover with a packet of stickers, so that the listener can personalize the cover artwork. Also, each track is accompanied by a gloriously cheesy music video. The videos feature everything from people rapping in bear costumes to rifles being used as air guitars, and the homemade feel of the videos seem to fit the music perfectly. The Information becomes an experience in itself, where it can be touched, seen and, most importantly, heard.

Producer Nigel Godrich collaborates with Beck again, after working on Mutations and Sea Change together. On those albums, the production was sparse. This time, Godrich makes himself more visible, adding to the vast array of sounds heard on the album. He particularly excels on the albums darker songs, making them feel more along the lines of his work with Radiohead.

The Information starts out with a bang, with the first three songs standing out as among the best of his career. The percussion heavy "Elevator Music" is a non-traditional song featuring whistling, beeps, clicks, scratches and phone samples. The next song, "Think I’m In Love" is an insanely catchy pop song with Beck’s most personal lyrics on the album. The piano soaked refrain of "Think I’m in love/But it makes me kind of nervous to say so" stands out as a particularly confessional line. He follows that with the funky "Cellphone’s Dead," which features video game beeps, a Latin influence and samples of children.

The 15 track album is very disjointed, in many cases with each proceeding song encompassing a completely different genre and feel. He goes from the country influenced "Strange Apparition," with a piano reminiscent of Coldplay, to the soft lullaby feel of "New Round," to the infectious electronic of "We Dance Alone," to straightforward acoustic with "No Complaints." "1000BPM" is the most bizarre song, as Beck raps over a jumble of different looped percussive noises. The outcome is interesting, but really never gels. "Dark Star" feels like it could have fit on his last release, Guero, with its hollow feeling and a chorus with soaring strings that make the song feel almost sinister. The quirky "Motorcade," perhaps the masterpiece of the album, is backed by an electronic drumbeat with a simple guitar melody layered with synthesizers. It all creates a brilliant blend of noise, which would seemingly be pumped out of a stereo on a spaceship. The dizzying amount of sounds give a glimpse into Beck’s creativity and talent. He has always excelled because he was reinventing himself, and it’s in full force on this album.

On the downside, the hour long disc tends to drag on in parts, particularly "Soldier Jane" and "Movie Theme," which go nowhere. The ten minute album closer, "The Horrible Fanfare, Landslide, Exoskeleton" is a modern "Revolution 9," interweaving samples from earlier tracks over a dark groove. It is fascinating, until it closes with director Spike Jonze and author David Eggers speaking about space travel, which is why man created the skip button.

While it may not be a party album like Midnight Vultures and Odelay were, The Information instead is a perfect album for the iPod obsessed culture. It’s not his most accessible work, but his most sonically diverse. With The Information, Beck has created the album of the future.
Score: 3.5/4.0

This appeared in the October 6, 2006 edition of The DePaulia