New Beck Album The Information: First Listen

This is a track by track first listen review of Beck's new album The Information which is available to all fantastic music writers like myself quite a few days before it's official release date on October 3rd. Or maybe it's just anyone who's heard of bit torrents?

The Information album will be coming with stickers so that fans can make their own cover.

I've been a fan of Beck dating back to first hearing "Loser" in 1994. To get an idea of where I stand on prior Beck releases I think Odelay and Sea Changes are probably his best two albums partly because of how different they are from each other. They are both excellent but in totally different ways. That being said I'm also a big fan of Mellow Gold, Midnite Vultures, and Guero. I also find his early work like Stereopathic Soulmanure quite interesting. I know you're asking "Where's Mutations?" For whatever reason I've never been able to get into that album. I know it's many Beck fans favorites. I think the songs on it are good enough but they all sort of strike me as the songs on a Beck album that aren't as interesting as the really goood ones all collected onto one album. I know that's a very unpopular opinion to have, but hey, there it is.

So for those who haven't already completely invalidated my opinion due to my feelings on Mutations, here's my first impression of the new Beck album "The Information." which like Sea Changes is produced by Nigel Godrich who is most well known with his work with Radiohead(see also Thom Yorke's new album, Travis, and Paul McCartney's "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.")

1. Elevator Music - Loving the "one two you know what to do" intro. There's a looser and funkier feel to the this than on anything on the somewhat underwhelming Guero (mostly because of it's similarities to Beck's prior work making it not feel as fresh, I still feel it's a fine album.) I'm really liking the production on this track with the spacy reverb being used to create very interesting sonic textures.