Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 02/10/06
Label: Interscope

Beck's last record, the Dust Brothers produced "Guero", promised a return to the "Odelay" sound we hankered after yet only proved that he was skirting perilously close to sounding too much like, well, Beck. That its swift follow-up, "The Information", stays in similar cut and paste gonzo hip-hop territory would set off alarm bells were Nigel Godrich - producer of the melancholic acoustic washes of the brilliant "Sea Change" and "Mutations" - not at the boards. Released between, and often exceeding, the blockbuster productions like "Midnite Vultures", these albums were spaces in which Beck dropped his pop art masks.

If there have been two paths to his scattershot progress over the years - the big budget album conceits vs the dime store folk - "The Information" wants finally to unite them. And after rumours of Timbaland and others, it's not surprising that it's Godrich - who strips the parody and pastiche away to reveal that beautifully economical song craft - who got the call. Despite that, his precision aesthetic isn't exactly suited to the bricolage of "Odelay" and on first listen, the tracks that aim for that sound seem to have smoothed out excitement and chance to leave a dense middle range that's competent rather than thrilling.

Certainly, "The Information" excels when both producer and artist are in territory that they've mined brilliantly in the past but even the Beck-by-numbers tracks like "Think I'm In Love" reward repeated listens. On "1000 BPM" and "Motorcade", Godrich turns digital tricks worthy of Berlin's electronic vanguard, sounds that wouldn't crop up on a Dust Brothers record. The Eno-esque "Movie Theme" only reinforces the suspicion that this pairing is as close to the Bowie/Eno axis as we're likely to hear this year.

The usual magpie references to the pop canon - The Stones, Herbie Hancock, even the LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge" suggested on "Inside Out" - are lovingly applied. But this time Beck's painting on a grander scale; conceptualizing the record around the information overload that's robbed his past achievements of the context in which they once seemed so radical. When every kid's computer is a sampler and every broadband connection a pop cultural library of possibility, the old tricks aren't enough. So, he's turned his gaze back on himself and created a record that brilliantly summarises and even critiques his own past.

Now, how Beck is that?

    by James Poletti