Beck And Danger Mouse, Hanging Out In Silverlake, Record An Album

Dan Gibson | July 1, 2008 12:00 pm
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ARTIST: Beck TITLE: Modern Guilt RELEASE DATE: July 7, 2008 WEB DEBUT: June 30, 2008

ONE-LISTEN VERDICT: It seems that every time I end up doing one of these “leak of the day” posts, I end up being underwhelmed by the disc in question. Is it the nature of this “one-play review” system, or is it that today’s “biggest names” are often those artists who have seen their most vibrant, innovative days pass them by? I listen to music nearly all day, every day, and every week there’s inevitably something that I’m really excited about, something I can’t wait to listen to again. Modern Guilt is not one of them.

If you replaced Beck with Cee-Lo, Modern Guilt would be a Gnarls Barkley disc, and not really in a positive way; each song sounds promising at the start, but then drops back in the Danger Mouse sound. Which makes me wonder: Is there some point when we’re going to give up on Danger Mouse? Sure, I liked “Crazy” as much as anyone, the disc with Jemini was solid, and in retrospect The Good, The Bad, and The Queen was better than I initially thought, even if cutting up Tony Allen’s beats is nearly unforgivable. His production on Modern Guilt is dangerously close to sounding like a cliche, with big beats you can’t really dance to and moody vocals muddled somewhere in the middle. Beck obviously jumps from one interpretation of a genre to another, but this disc doesn’t really sound like a Beck album beyond the presence of his vocals, which haven’t really been his strong suit (with the possible exception of Midnite Vultures).

None of the songs are bad, and the ten tracks and 33 and a half minutes fly by. But I can’t imagine deliberately putting this disc on again, although I’ll probably leave it in my iTunes library and let the tracks pop up now and again on shuffle. What are the Dust Brothers doing these days, Beck? You might want to get out your Rolodex and give them a call.

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