Beck - Modern Guilt
I have to admit, I have the proverbial love/hate relationship with Beck’s recordings. Throughout his career, his releases have been like an autobiography of my failed relationships with psychotic girlfriends—the ones who out of left field dump you for no reason and, as soon as you get over the pain and frustration of the whole experience, show back up in your life and act like there is nothing wrong.
Plus, I have
always been skeptical of bands/artists whose first releases instantly
become the flavor of the month. I shy away from flashes in the pan,
and when I first heard Beck’s 1994 debut smash hit Loser I was certain
that it was a one hit wonder and wrote it off as yet another slick
pop gem mass produced by the gigantic media hype machine. Hence, while
everyone was saturating the environment with Mellow Gold noise pollution,
I was finding refuge in Massive Attack’s Protection,
This was the beginning of my love/hate—or I guess to be chronologically correct, my hate/love—relationship with Beck. I wrote off Mellow Gold as yet another paragraph in the history of pop culture textbook—enter that easy fly ball to left field,Stereopathetic Soul Manure a lo-fi recording released far before lo-fi became the new sensation and the bane of my aural existence. Maybe it was because this recording scared away all those sheep monophonically droning to themselves the words to their new national anthem, “I’m a loser baby, so you might as well kill me” or maybe it was the reminiscing sounds of Sonic Youth, but I fell in love with this album. It was here that Beck and I would go back and forth, the next release One Foot In The Grave was doomed from the beginning for the fact that it was associated with the egotistical Calvin Johnson who was never nice to me in the few times I met him; hence, I hated the recording. Lo and behold, came Odelay and Beck and I were back on speaking terms.
So, this roller coaster of a pattern goes on and here we are with his latest release Modern Guilt, and it is suppose to be one that I do not like—well, in the infamous words of Mike Watt, “Another theory shot to shit.” To put it bluntly, I love this album, from the faux Phil Spector-ish big drum beat opening on the first track “Orphans,” to the sexy Annette Funicello surf guitar riffs that drive the song “Gamma Ray,” to the snappy Tin Pan Alley sound of the title track. But don’t let all this happy-go-lucky soundscapes lead you astray, the pendulum has swung to the dark side on this recording, and you are not going to find happy faces, hearts or peace signs in any of messages of these ten songs.
As with the opening song “Orphans,” the trippy paranoia that lurks in the shadows of the U.N.K.L.E.-ish sounding song “Walls” features the relaxing refrains of Cat Power, which is a great introduction to the Minus The Bear influenced follow up track, “Replica.” Modern Guilt closes with the tiny but abrupt explosions of the song “Volcano”—a song that could easily have been an outtake from the Sea Change album. Overall, I feel you will definitely agree that Beck has created yet another small gathering of atmospheric yet over the counter drug-induced fantasies that will both stimulate the soul to want to stay in bed and the mind to produce sweet dreams of apocalyptic pleasures.
