OK, up until last week, we (Wink, Rob, Wayne) hated Beck. Loathed him. Wanted to kick him in the nuts. Over-rated. Wouldn't have a record deal if Thurston Moore hadn't gotten a great blowjob from him. Another piece of crap musician Moore delivered to (then) Geffen (now Interscope, the ONLY label - that matters, and their best artists are fleeing like rates from a spaceship with an air-leak) - yeah, we could write paragraphs about The Ways In Which We Hate Beck Because He's a Talentless Fuck.
But his most recent CD "The Information", from 2007, with accompanying DVD... for $2 cash. Honestly, Wayne bought it figuring he could sell it for $10. Ha! Life loves to throw curve balls.
All three of us think this is the best CD we've heard in the last year. Really, it's that good. It's like he learned everything that was good on all his earlier CDs that other musicians made happen, and did it himself. This is his "Pet Sounds" or even the Beach Boys album that never was (Brian Wilson finally released it in 2005, but please.)
Great tunes, great lyrics, breaks into choruses or orchestra parts, a complete but seamless pastiche of hip-hop, love songs, Motown, 60's Summer of Love, samplicious funk, electronica, hints of trip-hop, glitch/IDM/whatever, electro, bad indie rock, crappy punk... the list is endless. Everything but ethnic musics, which right now are being so overly-used and mined and such that they suck. The one thing he passes on is the one thing that needs a pass.
And each song is basically part of each style with mostly abrupt switches to other styles that somehow never, ever fail, but make perfect sense. His hip-hop stuff makes Eminem and Puff Doody look bad, his rapping and singing and seriously...crooning, all work. And as said, he just suddenly shifts from one to the other and IT WORKS. In fact, IT KILLS.
If someone said a month ago "you will hear a Beck album and like it" - not even love it, like it, we'd have put $1000 each down on that bet. And lost. And wouldn't have cared. Yeah, it's that good. In a time when we feel like the end of music has finally come... Autechre took the electronic stuff as far as you could go, the two Hallucinogen albums are both the two most psychedelic and best produced CDs you'll ever hear, most sales are reissues and old turns who keep pushing on (Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen being two exceptions) - and Beck does the one thing left: he does nothing new, but somehow blends just about every type of music into songs that make up this album and it's just awesome.
Our guess is that this will fail badly, like all true masterpieces. His old fans will hate it because it's not the same old stuff they liked, and this is so far all over the map there's no way it'll gain new fans.
The only flaw is his need to give himself lots of "musical credit" - yeah, if he played sitar it's not like he knew what he was doing or you'll notice it, and "scratching"? Please. And listing "percussion" and "drums" and "drum effects" is stupid, as is "programming" and "programming effects" and "effects" and "drum effects". If there was a joke in there, anywhere, like Robert Rich's "glurp", it'd be funny, but it's not. So he's still way to serious to live, so someone please shoot him, esp. now that he's finally put out not only an album worth owning, but one that anyone who really appreciates music (read: Music Sluts) must own. Go get it, and get a rifle too while you're at it, and kill him before he Jumps The Shark.