As reported on my NEW music blog...

Beck’s new album - Modern Guilt will be in stores near you on July 8! Here is the tracklist: Orphans, Gamma Ray, Chemtrails, Modern Guilt, Youthless, Walls, Replica, Soul of a Man, Profanity Prayers, Volcano

Cant wait!
[Edited 6/12/08 17:22pm]

yay!

looking forward to it, and glad to hear it'll be out so soon!

[Edited 7/6/08 23:19pm]

Go to www.beck.com to hear the new song Chemtrails.
Click on the boombox in upper right corner.

It's a cool song. Very 60's sounding. This is fitting considering I read Beck wanted the new album to be 60's sounding and just 10 songs. Mostly falsetto heavily reverbed vocals. Quiet verses, propulsive beats during chorus. Guitar freak-out jam at end. Nice stuff. Can't wait to hear full release. And in just a few weeks!
I like this new system where we are getting new releases very quick. No waiting for months on end. Thanks Trent.

Time for Rolling Stone to break out the old 5-star stamp again.

it's about damn time

Bfunkthe1 said:

[Edited 6/13/08 8:27am]

Always great to know Beck's coming out with something, because at the very least it's interesting. 'Chemtrails' seems alright. Great drums, but as a song it seems to be lacking something, IMO.

Tracks are:

"Orphans"
"Gamma Ray"
"Chemtrails"
"Modern Guilt"
"Youthless"
"Walls"
"Replica"
"Soul Of A Man"
"Profanity Prayers"
"Volcano"

It's produced by Danger Mouse?!
Hell yes.

MendesCity said:

Not sure how I feel about Danger Mouse. Kinda neutral. But I really like this new Beck tune. So if that's any indication of his involvement, he's doing a great job.
Didn't he do Gorillaz with Damon Albarn?

i think im over my beck fixation.

InsatiableCream said:

Beck's pretty steady going with his releases.....

Props to Beck already Chemtrails sounds nothing like prev beck releases.

To me I hear echos of 70's prg rock, with Yes like Rickenbacher bass lines, and buried vocals.

I think it is diff, and as I always say I support Beck, without even hearing a song, cause I know he will push his boundaries and fly without a safety net.

aalloca said:

Interesting. As a fan of "prog", I hear more late 60's prog than 70's. You know, the beginnings of prog as opposed to the more technical 70's prog. It is kinda prog-pop I guess. As I stated earlier, Beck said he was going for a 60's sounding vibe. He succeeded. And without sounding overtly retro.
Regardless, I like it and look forward to hearing the rest.

Bfunkthe1 said:

Would you agree that the bassline is very Chris Squire like?

In the Studio:
Beck Conjures 1960s Brit-Rock Vibe on Danger Mouse-Produced “Modern Guilt”
5/12/08
Link


“It was the most intensive work I’ve ever done on anything,” Beck says the day after finishing his new record, sounding slightly dazed.

For his 10th studio disc, Beck worked with Brian Burton, better known as Danger Mouse — who’s overcommitted as both a producer and a member of Gnarls Barkley, which just released a record of their own. “It was like trying to fit two years of songwriting into two and a half months,” Beck says. “I know I did at least 10 weeks with no days off, until four or five in the morning every night.”

Burton remembers Beck’s stamina during their late-night sessions: “He’s like a machine. I always got tired before he did. I stayed pretty late, but I’d usually hear the next day how late it went.”

The resulting album, tentatively titled "Modern Guilt", is full of off-kilter rhythms and left-field breakdowns, with an overall 1960s British vibe.

Beck’s vocals float over the music as if he’s singing along to some mystical radio station in the next room. The title track has the groove of a good Zombies single, while the twangy guitar and uptempo beat of “Beggars Shoes” make it sound like Beck’s cruising at maximum speed down Route 66.

The lyrics include lines about the ice caps melting down (and “the transistor sound”), but there were many earlier versions. “I can’t tell you how many times I wrote and recorded a complete song,” Beck says, “and then just took everything away but the drumbeat and wrote a whole new song.”

Beck and Danger Mouse knew each other casually before making the record — some of Beck’s former musicians ended up playing with Gnarls Barkley — but they were both surprised at how naturally they worked together. “It felt like we could have been making our fourth record together,” Beck says. “It did help that we share a lot of musical references. We spent the first week just talking about different records. His knowledge is pretty deep, especially with some of the obscure late-Sixties, early-Seventies rock.”

The original vision for Modern Guilt was 10 short tracks. “I was hoping all the songs would be two minutes long,” Beck says, “but then I got rid of all the short songs.” Each song started with Beck playing acoustic guitar over a drumbeat: If it made the cut, they’d flesh out the music, usually with Burton playing keyboard bass and Beck playing most of the other instruments. There were just a few guests: Joey Waronker added drums to the epic “Chem Trails,” which would have fit in nicely on an early Pink Floyd record. And Cat Power’s Chan Marshall added backing vocals to a few tracks, including the melancholy “Walls,” which includes the lyric “Some days are worse than you can imagine.”

For Beck, always eager to shake up music-industry practices, the disc marks the end of his major-label contract. “I’ve had this deal since my early 20s,” says Beck, 37. “I don’t have any plans at the moment. It’s anybody’s guess where things are going week to week with the music business.”
[Edited 6/14/08 22:54pm]

I'm looking forward to this. I'm looking forward to giving Beck another chance. Almost everything I've heard by him is usually pretty good/great, but nothing really ever sticks to the ribs very long. I've had a few brief infatuations with him, but the style over substance aspect of his work doesn't keep me interested for very long. The closest I ever came to being a full-fledged fan was with Midnight Vultures. I'm liking "Chemtrails" a lot, so I'm looking forward to this.

Xcalibre said:

what about 'Odelay'?? still his best if you ask me!

abierman said:

yeah, that was the other time.

this will be interesting. Beck is one of those artist that does the same twice (like Bowie until he did the 80's shit trilogy...)

aalloca said:

Yes. It is very, ummm, Yes like.
If the song had some big vocal harmonies going on, it would sound very much like early Yes. Meaning the first couple of albums. Before they hit their stride.

Copycat said:

His drumming on this is bad-ass.

From drownedinsound.com:

QUOTE
This afternoon, DiS popped over to the XL offices in Ladbroke Grove, West London, to have a listen to the new Beck album Modern Guilt, which will be released on July 7th. Artwork, pictured above and the very first press reaction to the record below...

DiS was left in a room covered in M.I.A. posters and the stereo cranked out this Danger Mouse-produced album for 33 minutes. That’s 33 minutes. Short, yes? Here’re our first impressions…

- - -

1 ‘Orphans’
Throbbing bass, cheeky skittering hand-clap riddled hip-hop drums and lush Beach Boys backing vocals courtesy of Chan Marshall, better known as Cat Power.
Random lyrics: "Fighting the fire with your bare hands... A grain of summer in your hand..."

2 ‘Gamma Ray’
Tumbling like a rolling in a barrel muddle of Television's jagged edges, shoegaze-swooping backing vocals and a little bit of that post-Beastie Boys stuff we’ve come to expect from Beck.
Random lyrics: "Come on little Gamma Ray, you're standing in a hurricane..."

3 ‘Chemtrails’
Pace drops with lots of floaty “aaahhh-ahhhhh”s from Mister Hansen and Cat Power, drifting along nicely before tumbling in a Beta Band kinda way with a waft of Flaming Lips. You’ve probably heard this one already, but if not visit myspace.com/beck. We might be wrong but this album version seems longer than what’s been on Zane Lowe’s show.

4 ‘Modern Guilt’
The title track kicks the pace back up with a Beatles-y waltz with little digital flecks and squalls rummage their way in amongst the dum-dum-DUM-dum...
Random lyrics: "I'm a pawn piece in the human geee-noo-ome…"

5 ‘Youthless’
Opens like Justin Timberlake and the bass grinds like a vanilla ‘Milkshake’ ‘til some Kraftwerk keys come dripping all over the place like the record’s about to turn into a Fabric remix album. It’s easy to imagine The Field doing an amazing remix of this.
Random lyrics: "My body can't get no relief…"

6 ‘Walls’
Sounds like a single. Somewhere between the glossy-dirty shuffling of OutKast's Stankonia and something the Police might've done.
Random lyrics: "Hey, what you gonna do, when there're bombs falling down, falling down on you..."

7 ‘Replica’
A slightly downbeat affair, but with more rapid, skittering drums. Like much of the record so far everything is cut and pasted so quick that it hits like Kid606 or Squarepusher. Think Kid A off his tits!

8 ‘Soul of A Man’
A riff romp. Imagine a supergroup of The Stones, The Roots and Queens of the Stone Age, kickin' it like Run DMC never happened.

9 ‘Profanity Prayers’
More robotic, but still with drums chasing a runaway train and big woo-doooh-oooohs giving this distorted party jam a chorus before it breaks down to acoustic guitars, before picking back up.

10 ‘Volcano’
No sooner has it seemed to have got started, it ends. ‘Volcano’ is a ballad, a little like a cranked-up track off of Sea Change with little static-y pips amongst the beats.
Random lyrics: "It must be illusions that keep me alive… There's a ghost in my heart, that's trying to see the dark"

- - -

In conclusion: the record does sound great, with lots going on - far too much to take in on a first listen. Beck and Danger Mouse have done themselves proud. Expect some of the sound bite reviews in music mags to call it "The Neon Album", and we imagine the record will be mashed into many new shapes and forms on The Hype Machine before too long.

"I'm a pawn piece in the human geee-noo-ome..."

Amazing lyric...

Beck & Cat Power.....perfect!!!