Beck Album Recommendations: "Modern Guilt"

Album Recommendations: Modern Guilt

The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Beck

[#] Modern Guilt (2008)

Dry, clipped paranoia.

Reviewed July 29, 2023

Beck's sounding awful quiet on this one. Though unintentional (his hushed vocals were the result of a back injury during the filming of the "E-Pro" video), either in a moment of serendipity or pure craftsman opportunism, Modern Guilt is similarly dry, understated, and minimal. After years of working with various big name indie producers in the Dust Brothers and Nigel Godrich, Beck's thrown his hand in with Danger Mouse on this one, and it works out more or less as well as any other Danger Mouse collab. It's moody when it bounces, heavy when it's cloudy, retro-tinged (the entire album is drenched in 60s pop worship), and maybe a little light for its short runtime. That doesn't mean it isn't quality, just that it's rather diffuse for such a maximalist musician.

Modern Guilt works its best when Beck and band counteract the sparse sounds with heavy performances. "Chemtrails" is entirely carried by Joey Waronker's intense, pounding drumwork; this may be the best drum part I've ever heard in a song! With a lighter mix and a louder vocal, "Youthless" would be remembered as one of Beck's poppiest songs (thankfully, we got something a lot more tasteful and suited). "Soul of a Man" and "Replica" are similarly effective performances, with the focus on the low end creating a smoky bed for Beck to tell his tales of orphans, jet planes, melting glaciers, trainwrecks, and suicides-by-volcano. One has to wonder where "Gamma Ray" fits into all this though.