Beck - Modern Guilt

Where else to go but into the electro-psych stratosphere?

If 2006’s The Information voiced unease about technology’s effect on man, its follow-up, Modern Guilt, turns the tables. The question now seems to be what we’ve done to the world, and perhaps how can we rescue ourselves from displacement. Chemtrails’ visions of jets across the sky and people drowning is just one moment in an album rich with imagery, which sees Beck climbing from a bottomless pit, modern guilt in his hands, looking to rest by the side of a volcano.

Producer Danger Mouse seemed to be spreading himself thin with a so-so Gnarls Barkley sequel and uninspiring Black Keys album. Here, however, he and Beck create a bed of shifting sonics, where swathes of psych cushioning give way to gentle electronica on a record which is at once both intimate and epic. Modern Guilt is so complex it takes listen after listen to fully work out exactly what’s going on in the nooks and crannies of Beck and DM’s meticulous construction (Beck himself apparently laboured over it until four in the morning every day for 10 weeks).

Once you could see the joins in Beck’s anything goes approach. These days it’s so fastidiously refined there is no longer genre + genre = mashup; more Beck = Mr Modern Genius.

4 stars 4 stars 4 stars 4 stars

XL | XLCD 369

Reviewed by Jason Draper
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