Over the years, Beck has switched from hilarious hip-hop rock songs to sad songs about lonesome tears. However, Beck’s eighth album, “Modern Guilt,” is one of his most entertaining mellow albums, featuring psychedelic flutes and hip-hop beats.
This isn’t the first time that Beck has played mellow songs—his “Sea Change” album featured him singing some of the slowest and saddest songs of his career. His new album, “Modern Guilt,” is more like a mix of the slow mellow guitars and pianos of “Sea Change” with the hip-hop beats of “Odelay.” But rather than just a simple mix of the two styles, this album is also a mixture of psychedelic sounds with Beck’s music.
It’s no surprise that this album sounds like a trip back to the 60s, since Beck worked with producer Danger Mouse, who also helped produce albums for Gnarls Barkley, a band that sounds like a Motown hip-hop group. In fact, the second track, “Gamma Ray,” sounds like an old song by The Doors, complete with those cheeky 60s organ sounds.
That’s not to say that this is exclusively a psychedelic trip to the past. Although Beck sings spacey Brian Wilson-style vocals in the song “Chemtrails,” the song has the coolest drum beat, played by Jason Falkner. The song is filled with clanging cymbals and numerous rolls on the snare and tom-toms. The drum beat even fades back in at the end of the song, with a rocking bass guitar and squeaking computer sound effects.
The title track, “Modern Guilt,” also adds a few twists to Beck’s music. Danger Mouse adds his own bumping doo-wop drum beat, mixed with surreal string sounds that sound like they were taken from the song “I Heard It From the Grapevine.” There are cool piano chords as well, adding to the old-fashioned Motown rhythm.
There is also an unexpected cameo in the song “Walls” from Chan Marshall, also known as the modern folk singer Cat Power. However, her voice is hardly recognizable, because Danger Mouse mixed it so it plays at a pitch three octaves higher. Although I wish she played a bigger part in this song (considering that Cat Power released one of my favorite albums), the song still sounds cool, like a spacey doo-wop song with an Asian falsetto singer in the background.
For the last three songs, Beck moves back to playing blues guitar songs. “Soul of a Man” immediately brings to mind his single from the Guero album, “E-Pro,” but with lots of neat guitar slides that sound like revving car engines. There’s also some cool DJ scratches mixed in. “Profanity Prayers” is a bass drum-thumping, fast-paced electric guitar song, with some acoustic slide guitar in the middle to jazz things up. Beck also seems to be reciting a humorous elegy to the tired rap music industry, singing “Well you know how it looks when you pull all your books from the table/And you stare into space trying to discern what to say now…Who’s gonna answer profanity prayers?”
The final song, “Volcano,” shows Beck in his most contemplative state, singing that “I’ve been riding on this train so long/I can’t tell if it’s you or me who’s driving us into the ground.” Although the song proves just how unoptimistic Beck feels about America these days, “Volcano” also has gorgeous spacey strings and “aahs” floating in the air to accompany his voice.
I’m glad that Beck is a little cheerier and upbeat in his new album “Modern Guilt,” which is like a welcome trip to the 60s, with tinges of hip-hop mixed in. Hopefully Beck is going to release an even crazier album in the future, as he did with “The Information,” “Midnite Vultures” and “Mellow Gold.”
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