Frenchy’s Fracas

General Description

Artist/Band: Beck
Album Title: The Information
Year: 2006

It kinda grows on you..
 
How I Got Into This Music
Ah, read my review of his previous album, will ya? Just a bit more background info can be read here.

Google Search: Reviews of The Information | Review of this album at artistdirect.com | Album review at Answers.com | This artist at Last.fm

Tracks that got my attention:
Elevator Music
Strong links to his breakthrough single Loser, but I don’t mind. The keyboards for some mellowness and the guitars for acoustic and electric relaxation.

Think I’m in Love
Extreme melancholy but still kinda funny. Check out the music: it’s a big tip of the hat to movie mega-babe (now nutty far-right animal extremist) Brigitte Bardot’s Contact (have a YouTube experience, click here)

Cellphone’s Dead
It’s the weird combo of instruments that get to me: the 80’s retro-breaks combined with 70’s background vocals. The spooky synth bells-pattern reminded me of the Gorillaz’ DARE track, but maybe that’s just me..

Strange Apparition
With this track it’s easy: when he starts his vocals, I get a chill down my spine. And that piano gives us a great vibe, a kinda Neil Young thing, especially at the end.

Soldier Jane
Second friendly nod to Bardot’s Contact, but now with even more strong references. I like the lyrics on this one. The way the bass just drops by on this track is ultimate sweetness.

Nausea
Can’t quite put my finger on it - can’t remember what this song’s reminding of. Bass and strum guitars set a great pace, I love how he combines his samples with his instruments.

New Round
Lessons of the day
On a blackboard night
Seem to be erased
And the beacon has no light
Wow! There’s this sadness and warmth coming from this track, it tears your defenses down but also offers a nice warm blanket for protection.

Dark Star
Space age 70s drama, heavy on the string section. It took me some time to get used to it, but the harmonica sample helps a lot..

We Dance Alone
Not so impressive, still, a solid track.

No Complaints
Just love the synth-work on this song - that mellow spacey feeling!

1000BPM
Heavy fun-industrial-electro (new word? new genre?) music, another one that needed some time before I really started liking it.

Motorcade
Weird intro, love the sudden switch and the great low-low breakbeat. Listen to the beat during the chorus, frigging low! Another fantastic collage of sounds and beats (the whistle’s also very funny). And the stuff during the last 90 seconds - man-o-man! Retro feeling, taking you back to the breakdance, body-popping era.

Information
Chorus gets to me, every time.

Movie Theme
Yep, the title really fits the song. It’s taking you back to Vangelis and Jean Michel Jarre (and more recently:Air) . Another space odessey track and I love it.

Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton
This track is so fucking (pardon my Frenchy!) weird. Listen to the gazillion different beats and samples happening on the background, foreground, in the middle, just everywhere! It’s collection of songs welded together to make this unbelievable construction. Steel guitar, easy rock guitar, weird breakbeats and samples, everything put together in a beautiful and weird way. With four minutes to go the track’s totally mellowed out and the last two minutes are just plain wacked out; not a lot of people will finish listening this one, but I enjoy it very much!

Conclusion
When I first started listening to this album somewhere in November 2006, I thought it was just like his Guero album: nice, but not really great. But I kept coming back to this album, something about it just clicked for me and if I’ve applied my limited writing talents correctly, the stuff I wrote before should give you an idea of just why it clicked).
The weird and haunting combined with the funny and mellow. The great collages of styles and sounds; my friend, you need to listen to this with headphones.
Believe it or not, this album’s one of my favorite albums of 2006.

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