The Information -- one of the best albums Beck has ever made -- starts with him going backward. "Elevator Music" is a mundane jumble of talking blues and hip-hop bricolage that sounds like it should be on a record called More Mellow Gold. The rest of The Information is just as dense in its rhyme games, rhythmic details and overdub antics. But it is a compelling overload, combining the sample-delic bloom of Beck's best-loved album, Odelay, and the folk-pop introspection of his least-understood, 2002's Sea Change. "Strange Apparition" is a funky strut with coffeehouse-angel harmonies and a saloon-piano lick that seems to have strolled over from the Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet. In "Soldier Jane," Beck harmonizes like a pair of John Lennons over a Neu-ish hum sprayed with synthesized star shine and spiced with droning sitar.

Beck plays many of the instruments himself, makes much of the noise (with producer Nigel Godrich) and often writes like a man overwhelmed. "I'm a seasick sailor/On a ship of noise/I got all my maps backwards/And my instincts poisoned," he sings in "Nausea," an impatient boogie with Pac-Man-beep electronics and the Hobbit-folk strum of Marc Bolan's Tyrannosaurus Rex. Things get even worse in the Bomb Squad-style Armageddon of "Horrible Fanfare," the first part of the album's closing suite: "Banality lives where hysteria kills." But the songs never drown in the data. Neither does Beck's certainty in them that cell phones and instant messaging do not equal clarity or connection. "I think I'm in love, but it makes me kind of nervous to say so," he sings in "Think I'm in Love," a marvelous gene splice of Kraftwerk's Autobahn and Love's Forever Changes. It is a sweet, plain-spoken thought -- and the kind that only matters when you have the heart to say it to someone out loud, face to face.

Four out of Five Stars

DAVID FRICKE

NME Reviews The Information.. "Brilliant"












Slippery bugger, that Beck. One minute, he's larking around in tight lycra, warbling about breaking all manner of 'Sexx Laws' in his best Prince falsetto; the next, he's pulled up his zipper, picked up a battered old acoustic and he's pouring out his pain over a hip-hop beat that rattles like a rickety railroad.

Critics the world over have snapped countless pencils asking the same question over and over: exactly who is the real Beck Hansen? The sidewalk busker, a wide-eyed kid with no home and no comb? The snake-hipped Hollywood chameleon, a showman with a thousand costume changes? The child of Scientology, a whacked-out, alien-loving child of the universe? Truth is, it doesn't matter - Beck can be all these things and more. Unfortunately, his last two albums didn't quite demonstrate it - 'Sea Change' felt a bit too sober, like an entertainer robbed of his audience, while last year's 'Guero', a reuinion with 'Odelay' producers The Dust Brothers mixed it up, but lacked the absurdist dog-on-a-bicycle charm that made his 1996 breakthrough such a joy. Luckily, though, the eerie, excellent 'The Information' weaves its cosmic tendrils through every era of Beck's career - and it's all the better for it. The world this album comes from is some sort of dystopian future, where piles of burning plastic beckon in an impending Ice Age, a kickdrum's beat sounds "like an SOS" and a rare hint of salvation comes when Beck ponders how nice it would be to blast into space in a glowing, multi-coloured spaceship. It's not the real Beck Hansen - it's the unreal Beck Hansen. Admit it: that's exactly what you want.

'The Information' finds Beck back with producer Nigel Godrich, the long-term Radiohead producer we last saw credited as arranger on Thom Yorke's 'The Eraser'. And indeed, it shares several traits with Yorke's album. There's the same sense of future disquiet. There's a similar use of ghostly electronics and outer-limit psychedelics. But, importantly, there's the the same feeling this is an artist genuinely using technology as a tool of exploration, not just buggering around with electronics to pass the time before the next tour.

If that makes it sound like a gloom-fest, then chill your moon-boots. "I'm worse for wear/But I'm wearing it well", he barks on the opening 'Elevator Music', with the sort of irresistible groove that comes on like Kraftwerk computer-boxing with The Beta Band circa 'Dry The Rain', but still feels utterly, irrevocably Beck. And if he hasn't quite captured the haywire tone of 'Odelay' - the songs here are sort of down, sort of melancholy - there are enough killer lines to confirm that he's rocking the brain-bending Dada rap-play better than he has for nearly a decade. "Voodoo curses, Bible tongues/Voices coming from the mangled lungs", goes 'Cellphone's Dead'. And yeah, he still flows goofy, without the authority of Jay-Z or the passion of Eminem; but that was never the point. Beck kind of raps like Keanu Reeves acts: dazed and slack-jawed, set adrift in a world that's confusing and constantly changing.

This isn't to say the emotional lessons of 'Mutations' and 'Sea Change' have been forgotten. 'Think I'm In Love' powers along on thunderous Kraut-tinged repetition, but it's a joy spiked with wisps of cello. Meanwhile, the album's most hands-down majestic track, 'Strange Apparition', rides a wave of piano to an epic, mountain-top climax of strummed acoustic guitar.

Perhaps more intriguing still, although never fully explicit, is the influence that Scientology has had on the concept of 'The Information'. Beck has a history with Scientology, and while he's not exactly the proselytising sort (you never feel as if he's waving a membership form in your face), the lyrics of synth-smeared space oddity 'Movie Theme' ("Looking for a ladder in the stratosphere/So I can be happy/Let my bones melt away") drop a few hints as to where his head's at. 'The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton', however, is the album's one slightly embarrassing Battlefield Earth moment. By its ninth minute, it's become a spoken-word track built over strange backwards drones and disembodied voices dreaming of space-travel. "You would be inside the spaceship, but also the spaceship", one mutters. "Like an exoskeleton. Know what I'm saying?" Er, oh yeah, dude. Totally.

Beck has plans for 'The Information'. He wants to release the whole album on YouTube, with home-made videos produced using a $100 mixer he bought off eBay. It's the sort of madness you only hear from the artists who really mean it. Because it was never really about irony for Beck Hansen. In every way he's a child of LA, in all its unhinged, history-free beauty, all surface and - well, not no content, but a content constantly reforming and refining itself, chucking ideas around like jacks in a playground and cackling as they fall. If Beck gets better as he gets madder, this is definitely his best since 'Midnite Vultures' - maybe even since 'Odelay'. Here comes the twister.

NME

HMV Review

'The Information' is Beck's most exciting record yet and it comes with never-been-seen-before visuals, a groundbreaking live show and the most unique album packaging in years.

Ever growing and expanding, Beck manages to stay familiar and fresh; first single 'Cell Phone's Dead' is Beck at his electro-rap best. Other highlights include 'Strange Apparition', US single 'Nausea' and the epic 'Horrible Fanfare/ Landslide/ Exoskeleton' - thirteen minutes of dub infected eeriness!

And just to prove that Beck's imagination is not limited to his music, the album itself will come with a blank CD sleeve and a sheet of stickers for the listener to make their own booklet. 'The Information' also comes with a DVD of homemade videos shot during the recording of the album, one for every track, featuring a host of family, friends and players.

He's gonna kill it with this one, as in GOOD. Can't wait.

it's great!

when does this come out?

Beck is one of the artists, like Radiohead, Like bowie, always seems to throw that curve. Im not really into Beck, though i respect him, kind of how i look at Dylan and Neil Young. It would be nice to see him get acknowlegment from the industry finally and not just critics.

NDRU said:

Out today (oct 2nd)


and it was sold out at a few stores I went into today.

yay

BECK...THE WHITE PRINCE



Top Male Artists

Prince
Beck
Seal
David Bowie
[Edited 10/3/06 20:51pm]

Is it even shocking that RS gave it a 4-star review? The only time they haven't given Beck a 4-star review is when they've given him a 5-star review. I like Beck, but I've never loved him and don't think he's great. Don't jump my shit SDL, cuz I do like him and I'll gladly listen to this one. I just don't seem to find him the great innovatore that RS does.

Why does this have to come with a damn DVD that no none wants to see? I don't have 19 Euro to spent on a single CD.

calldapplwondery83 said:

orgnote.....

calldapplwondery83 said:

The DVD confirms that Beck was either stoned off his ass or wants people to be stoned off their ass for this simply awesome album. Even the CD cover is printed on graph paper with stickers inserted.

If you get the chance, checkout the DVD. Classic physchedelic stuff.

Back to the album, in my opinion, and I have to give it the ol test of time factor still, this is his best work yet.

The songs are layered even more deeply than the usual Beck suspects.

Just an awesome album.

Later
[Edited 10/4/06 10:56am]

okay listened to it at home, listened to it in the car, it's a standard Beck album by tones, mixes, jokes, and vocals.... but, it doesn't sound as crystaline and well formed as something like Odelay's songs, the vocals sound a bit like he's going through the motions for Beck (at this point).

entertaining textures, and mixes.... but it's probably not going to make the impact I thought it might from the reviews.

what do you get when you mix "Revolver" with "Fear of a Black Planet"?

ufoclub said:

I'm a fan of Beck, and I'll buy this, but I haven't yet heard what I'd call a true classic album from him.

They all come close, and that's enough for me to follow, but I'm still waiting for him to push past the final barrier and do something legendary.

NDRU said:

what about Odelay? The songs, the videos...

ufoclub said:

Odelay was a good collection of songs. Really good, but not a revelation. I haven't seen the videos except for Where It's At.

Midnight Vultures comes the closest for me, the music being new & fresh, and densely layered, fun & original. But somewhere after Peaches & Cream the album loses cohesion in my mind.

I'm really just nit picking. I like Beck a lot.

NDRU said:

I'd say the songs on Odelay far outweigh the songs on Midnight Vultures! But maybe I should listen again....

ufoclub said:

The songwriting is better on Odelay, but I like the music better on M.V. if that makes sense.

NDRU said:

Yes from a creative standpoint, Midnight Vultures has more interesting mixes and textures, as does the new album, but the songs as a whole are very solid (at least all the singles and videos) for Odelay.

Can't believe you haven't seen all the videos, Beck makes better videos than he does songs! To bad Prince doesn't make GREAT videos.

ufoclub said:

I think Odelay is his best collection of songs, but didn't excite me musically as much as M.V. or even Mutations

maybe I'll look for a video collection