Beck - Modern Guilt

Beck
Modern Guilt

I've had a few weeks now to digest the new Danger Mouse produced Beck album, and after letting things ruminate a bit I think the album has grown on me. The standard boilerplate response to any new Beck album usually states something to effect that it is unique and innovative but pales in comparison to earlier efforts like Odelay or Mellow Gold.

Well I'm here to call bullshit on that nonsense. As blasphemous as it might sound (I promise to tear up my hipster club card as soon as I finish writing this) I honestly believe that Beck has been matured greatly over the years since Odelay and has become a better songwriter. This is not to say that I think any of his last three albums are necessarily superior to his early work, Beck's "mature songwriter" hat didn't fit him overnight, but it seems clear to me that he has come more into his own now than he had when "Loser" first hit on MTV.

What made Odelay and Mellow Gold so popular was not mature and thoughtful songwriting but a highly developed sense of the absurd and novel. Here was a nerdy white scientologist rapping over delta blues beats with the kind of cockeyed exuberance only a younger Beck could possibly pull off. The novelty of it all could not be denied and it was all very catchy to boot (I still know nearly every ridiculous line of "Loser" by heart). But simply by virtue of his fast growing popularity, Beck knew that he couldn't possibly write five or ten more albums worth of "Where It's At" caliber radio hits and stay relevant.

So the mature songwriter Beck killed the younger funnier Beck, but what he brought with him was a more fully developed sense of melody. Nowhere is this more clear than the haunting "Chemtrails" from the new album. The high breathy vocals display the best thought out melodic arc Beck has ever written. Just like with the previous two albums Guero and the Information, nothing here rocks as hard as a track from the canonized Beck albums. Instead, Beck opts to intersperse soft flowing melodies with driving funk and hip-hop beats. He also seems to have learned from Guero and the Information that if all the slow songs were at the end of the album, the album would seem to drag on and be too front-heavy. Modern Guilt instead alternates between slower and faster songs and seems to end quite quickly.

It's impossible to overlook the amazing production by Danger Mouse. The midas touch of the brilliant producer is in top form here with his trademark dreamy echoes and soul/r&b flourishes. The more I hear from Danger Mouse, the more excited I get to hear who he chooses to work with next. Perhaps Beck and Danger Mouse on the same album is more star power than one could possibly hope for, but I still can't help but imagine the awesomeness that would be a Danger Mouse / Jack White collaboration.

If only we could be so lucky.

Truckasaurus Synaesthesia

While browsing the sometimes interesting, sometimes infuriating pitchfork site, I came across the following video for the song "Fak!!!" by the electronic music group Truckasaurus:


The stock footage used in the video is of course from the golden era of WWF professional wrestling, an era I remember vividly from my childhood. It shows a match between Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior, two of my favorite wrestlers from that time period. I am certain that this footage was intended simply to be humorous by virtue of its juxtaposition to the music and its overwhelming homoeroticism (a fact that I can honestly say I was completely oblivious to when I was seven years old). For me though, the video isn't simply humorous nostalgia, it is a pretty good encapsulation of my childhood.

You see, from about 1990 until about 1995 my young life was consumed primarily by two things, professional wrestling and the Nintendo Entertainment System. In those days when free time seemed like a never ending resource, Sunday mornings were spent in front of the television watching WWF and the rest of the week was spent playing Super Mario Bros. 3. If you are my same age, you will no doubt remember the 8-bit digital soundtracks on NES video games, the kind that offered a wide array of synthesized bleeps and bloops as the closest possible approximation of real instruments.

And so, of course, when I heard the l0-fi sythesizer sounds of "Fak!!!" my mind immediately jumped to video games. Which immediately caused a synaesthetic mind fuck explosion when coupled with the oiled Hulkster in all muscled mustachioed glory, a visual already inextricably linked with video games in my mind. Such is the way with music, a techno song by a band I don't know or care to know anything about causes me to get all drippy nosed and nostalgic....and makes me want to play some Excite Bike.

Is this how it really begins?

Random thought:

I refuse to believe that anybody ever actually intends to start a country cover band. I think they actually start as real bands who can't book any gigs so they give up on everything good and right with the world in order to play Garth Brooks songs for drunk assholes in midwestern sports bars. That, or the lead singer desperately wants to be on CMT but he/she can't write songs so they hire some musicians who probably would rather be in a punk band and teach them to turn their amps down and make that twangy noise with their guitars.

I of course have no statistics or facts to back this up, but my overriding faith in humanity will not let me accept that there is any other way for such a thing to occur.