1) Elevator Music; 2) Think I’m in Love; 3) Cellphone’s Dead; 4) Strange Apparition; 5) Soldier Jane; 6) Nausea; 7) New Round; 8) Dark Star; 9) We Dance Alone; 10) No Complaints; 11) 1000 BPM; 12) Motorcade; 13) The Information; 14) Movie Theme; 15) The Horrible Fanfare / Landslide / Exoskeleton Bonus track: 16) Inside Out
Rating: 8/10
That genre-bending eclecticism Beck's known for? Somehow he's managed to make it sound cohesive this time.
The Information isn't another stylistic transformation for Beck. The preceding Guero was a throwback to the indie rock/hip-hop mashup that Beck had made his name with and The Information is a smooth follow-up for it, Beck seemingly wanting to claim a particular signature style for himself after years of genre hopping. Smooth is an appropriate descriptor in general: The Information was produced by Nigel Godrich whose experience with many finely arranged rock albums layers The Information with a particular kind of well-oiled execution. The vast majority of Beck's albums are to be enjoyed with their warts and all - the motivation for teaming up with Godrich feels like an attempt to tackle that.
The Information sounds slick and sharp, a deliberate move away from the oft-ramshackle sounds of the past albums. The songs are fairly short with a few specific ideas and focal points each that Beck and Godrich concentrate on: a particular sonical element the song is built around, a specific rhythmic impact, a few notable hooks that everything else supports. You could call it economical, but focused is more appropriate. Beck's tendency to go everywhere with his mad creative streaks is as much of a thorn for his albums as it is a boon, but with The Information the goal has been to keep a careful eye on everything that's being done. If most of Beck's work before this has sounded like he turned up in the studio and improvised a hundred ideas within a few hours, The Information feels a little more workman-like: get in the room, fine-tune a few good ideas and push them as far as you can, and make sure it's all completed before moving onto the next.
If that sounds too rigid for Beck, The Information is very insistent on making it clear that it's anything but. A sense of looseness and playfulness is all over the album, quite literally - the album comes with a semi-randomised set of stickers you can use to create your own wacky cover if you wish (I will forever regret I attempted, graphic design is NOT my strong suite). The bonus DVD tacked onto some editions features videos for every song, starring Beck, his friends, a strange selection of seemingly random props and a green screen. The songs are short, snappy and restrained from going overboard but they're still fun: alongside the few earnest songs you have feel-good pop hits, apocalyptic rapping, hip-hop by way of a carnival march (Rio, not circus) and general joyous nonsense, with some general indie rock sensibility having been rubbed off on everything throughout by Godrich's influence. On top of that the album even actively samples itself, which doesn't just contribute to a more consistent production angle but actively makes it feel like Godrich and Beck were mischievously playing around with the studio equipment.
It's obvious that a lot of the good spirit emanating throughout the record comes from genuine musical inspiration, and with the concentrated effort to keep things derailing turning out to genuinely work, it means that The Information is a rare beast - a thoroughly excellent Beck album. The 15-strong tracklist stays tight, consistent and good throughout; the closing suite "The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton" feels like a deliberate antithesis to that with its 10-minute, multi-part collage build but even that's not a bad track per se either - just a small mess that's as charming as it is needlessly long. The flipside to that consistency is that The Information isn't an album which stacks up one classic after another either. It sails smoothly on a 7-8/10 level throughout the ride, with only a few back catalogue all-time best to its name: chiefly the wild & bonkers ramshackle acoustic punk percussion explosion "Nausea" and the aforementioned carnival hip hop jam "Cellphone's Dead" where the final build up is everything and among Beck’ top bits of music alone. Sure, there's other key tracks (the groovy "Elevator Music", the classic pop feel of "Strange Apparition", the atmospheric "Movie Theme" and "Think I'm in Love" which sounds like a mashup of the other three) which represent the album at its best in many ways, but they don't jump out that much from their peers. But they don't need to either - just being equally good to the rest is more than enough.
The Information is a funny one, in the sense that it's rarely the first album you - or even I - think of when Beck is mentioned: it's not his flashiest nor his most convention-breaking, and it doesn't house any of the big tracks most frequently attached to his name. It's deliberately a little restrained and in the background, doing its own thing rather than coming supplied with a big "Beck does X!" banner. And yet, it subtly and quietly shoots to the top of Beck's discography by simply being a consistently really good record that emphasises quality control over chameleon-like musical statements. That may not sound much, but in effect it makes one of the best journeys you can have with Beck and that's genuinely welcome.
My copy of the album comes with the bonus track "Inside Out", a single-trick groove jam. It's clear why it was left out of the album proper, but at the same time I've found myself enjoying it much more when I've let the album ran through it after everything else than when I've listened to it in isolation. Its no-frills, straightforward energy is a fitting epilogue to "The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton", a quick release of energy after the long chaotic suite. It's a nice additional chapter - by no means essential but one of the few cases where a bonus track actually feels like it adds something to the actual flow of the album.
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