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Beck's World View Is Seriously Bleak

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By CURTIS ROSS

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 10, 2008

Dissimilar as they sound, "Modern Guilt" operates under a cloud of melancholy similar to 2002's "Sea Change," Beck's mournful survey of a broken romance.

This time, though, the stakes are much higher.

The lyrics are grim and apocalyptic, from people "swallowed by evil" as the jets soar overhead in "Chemtrails," to the urban claustrophobia of the title track.

Beck chose Danger Mouse to co-produce "Modern Guilt," and the choice couldn't have been more apt. With Gnarls Barkley, Danger Mouse turns Cee-Lo's musings on insanity into subversive ear candy, while last year's "The Good, the Bad and the Queen" was equal parts soothing and bone-chilling.

There are references to specific societal ills - global warming in "Gamma Ray," for example, or the deadly combination of religion and politics in "Profanity Prayers." But Beck's broader themes are isolation, soul death and the cheap substitution of junk culture for real life.

Final track "Volcano" sums up Beck's angst as he ponders the story of a girl who threw herself into a volcano.

"Was she trying to make it back/Back into the womb of the world," Beck wonders.

Beck's not quite so daring: "I don't want to fall in though/Just want to warm my bones/On that fire a while."

"Modern Guilt" is Beck's briefest album, 10 tracks in less than 34 minutes. The sonic and lyrical tomfoolery with which he established himself early in his career is replaced by an almost severe focus, although his wordplay is still wonderfully intact - check the tumble of images in "Profanity Prayers."

After running in place for two albums, 2005's "Guero" and its rapid follow-up, 2006's "The Information," Beck is back to surprising us on "Modern Guilt." It only took a vision of the world's end to do it.

Download this: "Chemtrails"

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