Beck: The Information

Beck: The Information

2006

Interscope Records

Format I Own it on: Compact Disc

Track Listing: 1. Elevator Music  2.Think I'm in Love  3. Cellphone's Dead  4. Strange Apparition  5. Soldier Jane  6. Nausea  7.  New Round  8. Dark Star  9. We Dance Alone  10. No Complaints  11. 1000 BPM  12. Motorcade  13. The Information 14. Movie Theme  15. The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton

Oddly enough, I almost forgot this album existed...I finished listening to "Guero" yesterday and today when I went to the CD rack to pick out what I thought was "Modern Guilt," I inspected the cover and thought to myself, "Wait...What is this?!" I took a quick glance at the back cover and the song titles "Think I'm In Love" and "Nausea" jumped right out at me...However if you would have asked me a week ago which album those songs appeared on I probably would have said "Guero." How did I forget about this album?



Well, after listening to it again, I can kind of understand why...It's oddly underwhelming at first...Yet on closer inspection, it's one of his most listenable albums...Beck sounds utterly lost on it, numbly rapping about cellphones and digital food malls over intricate grooves that exist somewhere between early 80's funk and krautrock...

The only notable departure from this bleepity sound-scape is "Strange Apparition" which is a dead-ringer for Mick Taylor-era Rolling Stones...Other than that the entire  album has this uniformly dazed sound. however, some good hooks do emerge, like the cool pop song "Think I'm In Love" and that "We're all pushing up the tincan mountaintop..." chorus on "Motorcade" is pretty hard to shake...



The album ends with a three-song suite that sums up the experience of the album perfectly; disjointed, slightly overlong and satisfyingly funky...Two guys talk in dispassionate circles about what the ultimate record would sound like...

"Like, depending, like change depending on what mood you're in. Like the best...or depending on like when you assume from a different age, they'll mean something different"

"I don't like it when they change. It frightens me..."

 Very 2006...Remember, the world was a confusing place back in 2006...

We found out Pluto wasn't even a planet!

We also discovered Lonelygirl15 wasn't real...I bet those aren't even real scissors...I bet they're pinking shears!



Hell, even "A Million Little Pieces" was fake...Man, I wish my hand was covered with candy sprinkles...My hand has more of a salty crust...




The cover of "The Information" is pretty bland when you first buy it,...It sort of looks like boring old graph paper...But it comes with this cool sheet of stickers that you can create your own customer cover for it...

This is what I did with mine...

(front)

(back)

It also comes with a sweet dvd (that a lot of people seem to dislike) where Beck makes no-budget videos for every song on the album utilizing cheap wigs, godawful video effects and funny costumes...It never fails to crack me up...

 So let's check out one of those videos...Here's "Think I'm In Love" by Beck...