2020 said:

thanks for the links! lovin Walls!

org notes rock

org notes do rock and so does Sdldawn!!!

Thanks!!! Cant wait to hear the entire new CD!

beck rocks too!

Sdldawn said:

I want to rock too!
Anyone...

Bfunkthe1 said:

The New York Times interview

July 6, 2008

In a Chaotic Industry, Beck Abides

By DAVE ITZKOF


SEVERAL months ago Beck Hansen finally fulfilled a promise he’d made to himself: to archive the heap of personal recordings in his closet. It was a chore that reacquainted him with the performer he had been early in his career and the artist he has since become, and as he wandered through more than a decade’s worth of unreleased music, he found himself feeling nostalgic, relieved and occasionally mortified.

“It is a bit random, what ends up getting released and what stays in the can,” Beck, who is known by his first name, said in his ambling So-Cal drawl. “Some of it’s embarrassing, and some of it’s better than you thought. Some of it should be burned.”

He compared his unreleased songs to planes on a runway, some still waiting to take off and some that never will, and marveled at the many unexplored destinations where his muse might have led him. “There’s so many directions things could have gone,” he said.

The paths taken and not taken have brought him to another valedictory point in his mercurial career. On Tuesday, his 38th birthday, Beck will release “Modern Guilt,” his eighth major-label studio album. It is his first collaboration with Danger Mouse, the D.J. and producer who is half of the funk-rock group Gnarls Barkley, and his final release under the recording deal that began with Beck’s 1994 breakthrough, “Mellow Gold, ”which featured the ubiquitous novelty song “Loser.”

The completion of his contract with DGC Records, which has since been absorbed by Interscope Geffen A&M Records, could be a climactic event, occurring as the music industry continues to implode. Beck could now seek a new deal with a major label, an indie or a concert promoter, or he could go it alone, as contemporaries like Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead and Tori Amos have done. Or his label could decide not to sign him again.

Yet the occasion seemed to have no impact on Planet Beck. “I haven’t bothered to plan anything,” he said. “I don’t know where the record business is going to be in six months. Or three months.”

Though much is made of Beck’s outward eccentricities — his tendency to speak in meandering half-sentences, his occasional use of puppets in his live show — beneath them he is a dedicated apprentice of pop songcraft and the history of the form. On a recent afternoon he was hanging out at the recording studio on Beverly Boulevard where he created “Modern Guilt.” He was dressed in a designer T-shirt and threadbare jeans that appeared to be held up by a length of rope. He had grown his blond hair to his shoulders, and he said he had recently shaved off a bushy beard (though given his youthful face, it seems hard to believe he could grow one).

Plucking aimlessly at an acoustic guitar on his lap, Beck recited the history of the building: how it had been home to ABC-Dunhill Records, where powerhouses of AM radio like the Mamas and the Papas and Three Dog Night worked their magic.

Beck said he wasn’t always such an attentive student. In the era of his hybrid folk-rock-hip-hop albums “Mellow Gold” and its sample-laden 1996 follow-up, “Odelay,” he was more concerned with making every song and every record completely different from the previous one, which turned out to be a trap, he said. And on tour he felt he was playing the same 15 songs over and over.

“I could just be doing a bunch of nonsense,” Beck said, “some French TV special and then going to do another festival in Japan. That’s what I did for years, and there’s a point where you start to feel stunted.”

His creative breakthrough, he said, occurred on his 2002 album, “Sea Change,” a set of plaintive, gimmick-free tracks inspired by a breakup. The recording process renewed his commitment to songwriting but came with consequences.

“I’m at the show,” he said, “playing the acoustic song, and there’s the guy in front, yelling, ‘Play “Loser”!’ I’ve been at points where I’ve had audiences leave — every performer’s worst nightmare.”

On “Modern Guilt” Beck’s goal was to split the difference. Working with Danger Mouse (whose real name is Brian Burton), he hoped that their mutually eclectic musical tastes would rapidly yield a set of songs that were upbeat but stripped down, exuberant without being overthought. Their first sessions, in December, yielded two complete songs in two days.

But the notion that “Modern Guilt” would be finished quickly soon evaporated. “The idea of trying to have both of us stick to a formula of any kind, it wasn’t going to work,” Mr. Burton said in a telephone interview. “We listen to so much different music, and we have so many influences, that it was like, well, forget that.”

Instead Beck spent about five months ruthlessly excising layers of production and even entire songs, ending up with an album that sounded to him as if it had been recorded “half alive at 2 in the morning, after God knows how many weeks of trying.”

Beneath the catchy, minimalist beats Mr. Burton provided, and some backing vocals from Chan Marshall (the singer-songwriter better known as Cat Power), the 10 tracks on “Modern Guilt” share a mood of dismissiveness and denial. Beginning with the first line of the first song, “Orphans” (on which Beck sings, “I think I’m stranded but I don’t know where”), the album’s lyrics frequently evoke a kind of beat-your-head-against-the-wall frustration, complete with images of walls that fall down on you and seas that swallow you up. The 33-minute album ends with the despairing “Volcano,” on which Beck sings:

I’ve been drifting on this wave so long
I don’t know if it’s already crashed on the shore
And I’ve been riding on this train so long
I can’t tell if it’s you or me who’s driving us into the ground

For good measure, he adds, “I’m tired of people who only want to be pleased/But I still want to please you.”

The brevity of “Modern Guilt” — only two songs are longer than four minutes, and several end abruptly around the three-minute mark — was deliberate, Beck said. “I wanted everything to be really concise, over before you’re done with it.”

But the desolation in his lyrics and even the album title were not expressions of specific grievances, Beck said; rather, they were the result of his stream-of-consciousness songwriting process. Usually, he said, he comes up with a melody quickly and then writes place-holder lyrics to help him remember the tune; sometimes the place holders end up on the record.

“Sometimes what you come up with on the spot is just going to be the most simple thing,” he said. “It’s not going to be the most clever or the most profound thing. But it works, somehow.”

Often his decisions are simply the results of indifference or nonchalance. The single “Timebomb,” his only new release of 2007, was put out because Beck had tired of the track.

And a musician who has made deft use of 21st-century innovations like YouTube is an aspiring Luddite. Beck shuns e-mail communication and tries to avoid cellphones, and he said he did not know that Radiohead released its album “In Rainbows” last year as a pay-whatever-you-want download until the producer Nigel Godrich told him months later.

Beck claimed to be similarly out of the loop about who would be releasing his music after “Modern Guilt” runs its course. “Nobody’s talking to me, and I’m not talking to anybody,” he said. “It hasn’t even been raised.”

If Beck does not seem concerned about his career prospects, perhaps he does not need to be. Though his album sales in the Internet age have been erratic — according to Nielsen Soundscan, his 2005 album, “Guero,” sold 867,000 copies, while his 2006 release, “The Information,” sold 432,000 — he is also a musician whose critical reputation and dedicated following will most likely allow him to keep working comfortably regardless of how he releases his music.

“I think his prospects aren’t based on record labels; I think they’re based on him and his art,” said Mark Kates, the former executive who signed Beck to DGC. “His output has been so consistent and so significant that I think he’s one of the few artists who is in a position to dictate what happens with his own career.” He pointed to the recent news that “Modern Guilt” would be distributed in Europe by the independent label XL Recordings as a sign that Beck was open to working with other record companies.

Steve Berman, an executive at Interscope Geffen A&M, said Beck was “part of what built Geffen and the legacy of Geffen, so from that point there’s a great deal of pride.” But he added that he could not comment on whether the label was seeking to sign Beck to a new contract.

Not everyone agrees that Beck needs a record label at all. Contemplating Beck’s position, Mr. Burton, whose Gnarls Barkley albums are on Atlantic Records said: “I’m just jealous. That’s all I’ll really say about that.”

Beck said he has been well served by his current label, through all of its mergers and changes. But he was also sentimental for his early days at DGC, when he knew everyone in the college radio department and toured with iconoclastic indie-rock bands like Pavement, whose roadies read histories of the Civil War and ancient Greece.

Even then Beck could tell he was not cut out for a traditional rock ’n’ roll career. “I was never the guy out all night in bars, hanging out with people in other bands,” he said. “I was home watching Antonioni movies, or reading, or going for hikes.”

Now a husband and the father of a son, Cosimo, 4, and a daughter, Tuesday, 1, Beck said he was excited about going on tour with his entire family — even if his domestic life is the one arena where he’s not fully permitted to express himself creatively.

Last year his wife, the actress Marissa Ribisi, gave their daughter the name Tuesday, which was not necessarily Beck’s first choice. “I tried to beat it,” he said. “I came up with Zsa Zsa. I got shot down. It’s up to her. I don’t really have a say.”

[Edited 7/5/08 16:08pm]

From thescene.com.au

Beck
Reviewed by: Johnny Sparklechops


It’s hard for me to review Beck albums.

Partly because I hate subjective muso-wannabe’s telling folks what’s hot and what’s not, but mainly because I happen to think Beck is the most important artist of the last 20 years.

Yeah, I know, it’ a big statement.

But here’s why I’m standing by it.

For me, his 1998 Forum gig is the best thing I’ve ever seen, while Odelay has sat atop my personal favourite list since I first heard it while sitting on a bus in 1996.

He borrows from everything you’ve ever heard and still manages to sound like the most progressive performer since Bob Dylan went electric.

He also plays guitar like a demon, has a superbly distinct voice and can dance the pants off any RnB poser you care to mention.

Admittedly there’s the Scientology, but I choose to block out that small indiscretion.

I mean, nobody’s perfect right?

‘Yeah, yeah….stop brown nosing and tell us about the album’ I hear you wail from the cheap seats.

OK, I will.

Modern Guilt, if you didn’t know (it’s possible you’ve been living in a cave for the last 6 months) was produced by man-about-town Danger Mouse.

Apart from his brilliant work with Gnarls Barkley, DM has spent the last year or so reinventing sounds for The Black Keys, Gorillaz, Sparklehorse, Zero 7, The Rapture and Paris Hilton (she didn’t ask, he just did it).

But with this collaboration you feel like he’s hit pay dirt.

The pseudo-psychedelic groove that Beck has championed for at least a decade just happens to be cut from the same mould as the noises in Danger Mouse’s head. There’s not a dud among them if you ask me.

Here’s the lowdown;

Orphans:
Brian Wilson meets The Beta Band. Classic opener with big drums, features Cat Power in there somewhere apparently.

Gamma Ray:
60’s psychedelia for the 21st century, and the perfect lovechild of Beck and Danger Mouse. “It’s definitely got his ears!”

Chemtrails:
The musical equivalent of spinning around with your arms outstretched. Swirls somewhere between Pink Floyd and Spiritualized.

Modern Guilt:
Kinks-like shuffle that’s as comfortable as a pair of furry slippers. Paisley ones.

Youthless:
It’s got that ‘Hell Yes’ vibe and is funkier than a mosquito’s tweeter. Jungle drums, hand claps and keys reminiscent of The Message by Grandmaster Flash.

Walls:
Catchy pop muse with Beatles-esque strings and more bizarre lyrics from the mighty Becktionary.

Replica:
A bit Radiohead, a bit D&B, a bit eccentric. I’m guessing it didn’t sound like this before Danger Mouse got to work.

Soul of a Man:
Big. Bold. Rock. If Michael Hutchence was still alive, he’d have this as the first track on his next mix tape. He’d probably be banging on the lid of his coffin too, seeing as how they buried him.

Profanity Prayers:
Industrial soul music, if there is such a thing. Trippy fuzzbox Nirvana, possibly the album’s biggest tune.

Volcano:
Slow and dirge-like, harking back to the Sea Change years. More smack than crack.


At 33 minutes Modern Guilt does tend to leave the listener a bit hungry, but that’s better than the alternative right? It’s a return to form for the guy that never lost it and I’m already convinced.

Allmusic Review 4/5 Stars

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

At first glance, it seems like the teaming of Beck and Danger Mouse is a perfect pairing of postmodern pranksters, as neither musician has shaken the first impression he's made: for most, Beck is still seen as that ironic Loser, trawling through pop culture's junk heap, while Danger Mouse is the maverick of The Grey Album, the mash-up of the Beatles and Jay-Z that reads like a joke but doesn't play like one. Close listening to either man's body of work easily dispels these notions, as Beck has spent as much time mining the murky melancholia of Mutations as he has crafting neon freakouts like Midnite Vultures. He's made a career bouncing from one extreme to the other, occasionally revisiting the cut 'n' paste collage that would have seemed like a natural fit for the sample-centric Danger Mouse, but when he partnered with Danger Mouse in 2008, Beck's pendulum was swinging away from the Odelay aesthetic, as he spent two records on the lighter side, thereby dictating a turn toward the dark. As it happens, this is Danger Mouse's true forte, as his productions have almost uniformly been dark, impressionistic pop-noir, whether he's working with Damon Albarn on the Gorillaz or the Good, the Bad & the Queen, or collaborating with Cee-Lo as Gnarls Barkley (whose fluke hit "Crazy" had nasty rumbling undercurrents) or even blues-rockers the Black Keys. So, he turns out to be a perfect fit for Beck, just perhaps not in the way that many might expect, although the title of their album Modern Guilt should be a big tip-off that these ten tracks are hardly all sunshine and roses.

Compared to the waves of grief on Sea Change, Modern Guilt trips easily, as this is a deft tapestry of drum loops, tape splices, and chugging guitars pitched halfway between new wave and Sonic Youth. This may not brood but it's impossible to deny its heaviness, either in its tone or its lyrics. Beck peppers Modern Guilt with allusions to jets, warheads, suicide, all manners of modern maladies, and if the words don't form coherent pictures, the lines that catch the ear create a vivid portrait of unease, a vibe that Danger Mouse mirrors with his densely wound yet spare production. As on his work with Albarn and the Black Keys, Danger Mouse doesn't impose his own aesthetic as much as he finds a way to make it fit with Beck's, so everything here feels familiar, whether it's the swinging '60s spy riff on "Gamma Ray," the rangy blues on "Soul of Man," the stiff shuffle of the title track, or the thick and gauzy "Chemtrails," which harks back to the sluggish, narcotic psychedelia of Mutations. Danger Mouse assists not only with execution but with focus, pulling in Modern Guilt at just over half an hour, which is frankly a relief after the unending sprawl of The Information and Guero. Its leanness is one of the greatest attributes of Modern Guilt, as every song stays as long as it needs to, then lingers behind in memory, leaving behind a collection of echoes and impressions. If anything, Modern Guilt may be just a little bit too transient, as it doesn't dig quite as deep as its subjects might suggest, but that's also par for the course for both Beck and Danger Mouse: they tend to prefer feel to form. Here, they deliver enough substance and style to make Modern Guilt an effective dosage of 21st century paranoia.

Anxiety said:

Me too! It's getting great reviews!

I've got a ticket to see him in Sept in LA

'Youthless' is the jam!!!!!

I loves me some Beck!!!!!

Whoa!!!!!

Beck & Danger Mouse Deliver the Goods

I think we have a contender for the best album of 2008!

Modern Guilt is brilliant!!

First listen to Modern Guilt is epic - instant classic!

9.5 outta 10!!!!

I think this is his best album since Sea Change...


it works brilliantly

I think Replica deserves to be listened to many times.. it hides a well written melody with clever lyrics. It is a definite highlight.

Sdldawn said:

Absolutely. Every time I encounter this force -- or ever start feeling myself falling into this trap -- David Bowie's "Fashion" starts playing in my head.

I don't give a shit if what I'm seen wearing is considered hip by those who desperately attempt to define the times. I want to listen not to what will land me in good stead with the cocktail intellectuals, but rather what will bring me the most joy.

Beck does that for me.

And I'll be with Woody Allen in the bedroom watching the basketball game while the party roars on outside with pontifications so wildly traded and obvious in their intent as to make the New York Stock Exchange blush.

i cant stop listening to this new album

Sdldawn said:

And yet it hasn't even been released yet.

Brendan said:

so you want an orgnote?

Sdldawn said:

Let's just say that I'm not opposed to them if and when they should ever happen.

I came up with Zsa Zsa.

Thats my dogs name.
She's hungarian.

thedoorkeeper said:

Never mind, just read the New York Times. Nice.
[Edited 7/6/08 2:08am]

Sdldawn said:

Trying not to sound holier than thou, but I do assume you will purchase the real release in the stores also?

I will say I can't wait. And from the reviews especially the All Music one, who are usually spot on, this seems like a hit.

He is a few parts borrowed but the impact and payoff is 100% future looking.

aalloca said:

This is called try before you buy.. and after hearing what a great album it is, you can't pass up a silver back with artwork.


hope that answers your question.

speaking of.. this album would be fantastic on vinyl !!!!!

Sdldawn said:

Sdldawn amen to that!!! This is the standout track on this CD for sure!!! I have not stopped listening to it!

Sdldawn said:

Yes. In these trying times, one has to be frugal.
And I will be there on release date.
BTW, Damn this album is good.

I’m told that this is allegedly very good by some person that I might allegedly know who has allegedly heard.

My lawyer wishes me to further interject that there is little “modern guilt” for those that can produce a major credit card, a money order, or cold, hard cash.