During the bizarre final minutes of Beck's ninth album, director Spike Jonze and author Dave Eggers philosophize about what the "ultimate record that ever could possibly be made" would sound like. "[The songs would] change depending on what mood you're in," imagines Jonze. "Or, depending on when you listen to them at a different age, they'll mean something different." In many ways, Beck's discography embodies this idyllic malleability; from the sullen strains of Nick Drake to food'n'sex funk to broken-down blues to awkward boho-beat hip-hop, his oeuvre is a one-stop shop-- emotionally and sonically-- that defied stagnation for more than a decade. But his track record took a hit with last year's Guero, the first Beck album that cited Beck as its primary musical influence.
Ultimately, the same can be said for The Information, which is made from a similar scattershot, self-referencing pastiche. But there are key variations that give the new album a cohesion its predecessor lacked. This time, über-producer Nigel Godrich is the main collaborator, and his psychedelic studio wizardry one-ups the Dust Brothers' sample-based concoctions at nearly every turn. The record also benefits from a future-sick quasi-concept worthy of Philip K. Dick (or Thom Yorke). While still lyrically cryptic (sometimes maddeningly so), Beck injects many tracks with the distress of an attuned cultural observer raising a child in an age of phony wars, data saturation, and government-sanctioned apathy. The deadpan delivery remains intact, but his anxiousness and anger are more pointed than before.
Over a brisk groove, Beck states his frustrations on opener "Elevator Music", a damning critique of prettified American culture. The song details the troubling unreality of modern times, where the public is relegated to "fly on the wall" status, distracted by media overflow and the nine-to-five grind. "When you're down and out, pounded, and there's nothing that's real/ It's like a plastic heart too amputated to feel," raps Beck. His trademark spoken-word rambles are still rhythmically challenged and verbose, but, in context, the unorthodox flow can offer a vulnerable counterpart to the scathing precision of lines like, "If I could forget myself/ Find another lie to tell/ From the bottom of an oil well/ Cell phone's ringing to talk to my brain cells." As with most Beck songs, meanings are fluid, imprecise, and listener-specific, and The Information's strange wordplay lies somewhere between the straightforward heartbreak of Sea Change and the non-sequitur absurdity of Odelay. While the music sometimes suggests the manic hodge-podge of his mid-90s material, there's no more getting "crazy with the cheese whiz." Nearly every word on The Information has a distinct purpose.
Whether quoting the robot strut of Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon" on "Cellphone's Dead", driving a trippy krautrock beat through the title track, or scratching up the hallucinatory dub of "We Dance Alone", The Information pumps musical life into its references thanks to Godrich's space-age sheen. Yet, this upbeat liveliness is often subverted by Beck's increasingly hopeless obsession with death and decay.
With its graveyard calisthenics, windshield-wiping reaper, and roving coffin, 1994's "Loser" video made this particular preoccupation clear early on. But back then, at age 23, Beck was laughing at death and vouching for the sexiness of the netherworld. Now, at 36, there's little room for such frivolousness. Multiple appearances of words like "desert," "cremation," and "dust" ground The Information in stark morbidness. And the once-favored devil has been replaced by a more sinister "lord" who will "take his motorcade and drive us into the dirt." Religious cynicism and technological paranoia meet on "The Information", an unforgiving apocalyptic vision: "When the information comes we'll know what we're made from," sneers Beck. Elsewhere, the ill-fated "Soldier Jane" lies comatose at best, and, whispering on the slow motion ballad "Dark Star," Beck sees the American dream perishing at the hands of misguided warmongers: "A widow's tears washing a soldier's bones/ Sterilized egos, delirium sequels/ Punctured by the arrows of American eagles." Meanwhile, the album's most haunting eulogy ditches political commentary for something more personal.
Quiet and forceful, "New Round" sounds like a gift from father to son. "Every little step/ Every new direction/ The closer you will get," sings Beck, taking full advantage of his underappreciated vocal timbre. But, instead of ending up as yet another sappy "dad" song, "New Round" looks ahead to the inevitable disconnect between parent and child. "And farther away/ You'll go from where we are," he continues. Backed by spare acoustic guitars and a calm break beat, the harrowing love letter exudes a fierce passion missing from other parts of The Information.
While his lyrics offer few solutions to the current onslaught of ones and zeros, Beck encourages user-side involvement by offering blank cover art and a sheet of stickers that fans can arrange how they please (possibly a tribute to his grandfather, a founder of the similarly democratic 60s art movement Fluxus). But participation is also required to comb through the album's low points-- as in deleting the duds from your iPod. "Strange Apparition", on which Beck does a warbling Chris Cornell impression over rollicking Rolling Stones piano, is too boisterous when stacked against the album's stealthy charms. "Motorcade", on the other hand, is barely there; it's a soured tangerine dream, reliant on Godrich's aural doodads and little else. And, although Beck and friends goof around on the accompanying DVD (featuring super lo-fi videos for every song), it looks like the type of project that's more fun to make than it is to watch.
After Jonze gives his take on the ever-changing super album at the end of disc, Eggers politely disagrees. "I don't like it when they change, it frightens me," he admits. "It makes me feel like someone's pushing me from below, trying to turn me over and put me down." As he edges close to middle age, Beck is stuck between the spontaneity of old and a safer middle ground. Although The Information contains some of his most aware, intriguing lyrical head-scratchers yet, the familiar musical settings are something of a letdown from an artist famous for complete reinvention. "Thought I saw a ghost but it might have been me," he raps on "We Dance Alone", "might have been a world that was moving too fast, caught up in a future that was drunk on the past." It always used to feel like Beck was years beyond us but, as The Information attests, the universal struggle is finally catching up with him. Took long enough.
