Not as shocking, still great Beck

By Patrick Daugherty

Published Oct. 6, 2006

So what has Beck done this time? A disco gospel album with big band instruments? A Baroque-era classical piece with an indigenous African tribe supplying the vocals? A song-for-song cover of a Kelly Clarkson album?

Actually, The Information, Beck's ninth album of all original material, is his most conventional one to date. It is still his rock-meets-soul-meets-punk-meets-funk-meets-folk-meets-dance madness, but that is what people have come to expect from Mr. Hansen.

Aside from the ingenious customizable album cover and DVD with videos to every song on it, there is nothing here that Beck hasn't done before.

So though the album is not as shocking on first listen as the funk-drenched Midnite Vultures or the stripped down Sea Change, The Information, whether Beck wanted it to be, might be the first true Beck album.

Where many of Beck's other albums have been near genre exercises (of course it is never that simple with Beck though), the only genre The Information can fall into is, well, Beck. It is the one that finally brings together his seemingly innumerable personalities and musical sensibilities.

This could be a bummer for those expecting the wheel re-invented yet again, but apparently even Beck has realized that trying to avoid clichés and convention all the time eventually can become cliché itself (or at least really hard).

The album seems more familiar on first listen than previous Beck albums might have, but that fact doesn't subtract from its genius.

First track "Elevator Music" starts out with the line, "One, two, you know what to do," which is perhaps a sign that even the man himself is saying he's settling down and not attempting to stretch to every possible corner of the musical universe. And "Elevator Music" is vintage Beck at his best. A prominent bass backbeat, the aforementioned white-boy rhyming, cryptic, mind-bending lyrics, and odd, eerie sound effects populate the track.

"Think I'm in Love" is no less excellent. Sounding like a perkier Sea Change track, it also marks one of the first appearances of vulnerable Beck lyrics showing up on one of his non-folk albums.

"Soldier Jane" is perhaps the album's best song. A beautiful, strummed acoustic number, it wouldn't sound out of place in a nature documentary with its sweeping soundscapes and echo-y effects.

Where "Think I'm In Love," and "Soldier Jane," showcase Beck's acoustic side, "Motorcade" and "No Complaints" are among Beck's finest use of Nintendo sounds and are two of the album's most fun songs.

Producer Nigel Godrich's Radiohead background looms large over album closers "Movie Theme" and "The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton," the latter of which might be Beck's strangest song yet. At 10 minutes and 36 seconds, the song incorporates nearly all of Beck's styles, and crams in an impossible amount of sound effects and bizarre spoken-word asides about spaceships and what the greatest album ever made would sound like.

None of these songs are among Beck's top five, or maybe even top 10, but like the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Stadium Arcadium, which was released earlier this year, they are a summation of his strengths and show him (gulp) finally settling down into his own musical skin. Beck has finally made a Beck album, and it is the near definitive one for a man so impossible to define.

Artist: Beck
Album: The Information
Genre: Slacker-funk dance rock
Record Label: Interscope
Release Date: Oct. 3
Most Listenworthy Track: 'Soldier Jane'
Reviewer's Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Ms