guilt, eh?

Speaking of modern, I hope you’ve heard, not as in heard through word of mouth but actually listened to Beck’s new album Modern Guilt. His eighth studio album ponders upon religious questions and his most self-admitting guilt thus far. Beck begins from birth, with his first track titled, "Orphans", and asking “if” he’ll meet is maker. Does it exist, and will I get there? He is alone and not alone. Working through concepts of being “stranded”, then comparing images of standing next to other “orphans in a tidal wave’s wake”. I imagine people standing on a beach before a tidal wave, all in the same position as everyone else, and then suddenly alone and drowning in water, suffocated by silence. He continues to braise issues of global warming and greening in "Gamma Ray". We’ve been smuggled by gas, but Beck compares “ice caps” and “Chevrolet’s” to something like a carousel, “going round, round, round”. Our news reports and enlightening essays keep telling us we need to change. When will the change come? When will the circle become a flat land, and will we fall off the earth as once conjured by man?

Beck wonders where his guilt stems from in track five, "Modern Guilt", when he admits, “Misapprehension is turning into convention don’t know what I’ve done but I feel ashamed”. Has Beck turned to convention? His lyrics are hard to decipher because his engineers, including the infamous Danger Mouse, have made the music behind them upbeat enough to get past his crimson take on individual displacement in modern day society. At times I find myself drifting from important phrases to the actual tune, and can’t quite fathom how Beck always is always successful in accomplishing great riffs and harmonies alongside dark writing.

The entire album is full of question after question, overwhelming to the philosopher, and the Mad Hatter could possibly be the only one to supply a satisfying answer for "Soul Of A Man". “What makes the soul, the soul of a man? Beat my bones against the wall/Put a bank note on your bond”. Does money complete a soul? Make it (the soul) happier? Make others jealous? We keep trying.

Beck winds down with "Volcano", telling us he may have been here before. He writes, “And I've been drifting on this wave so long I don't know if it's already crashed on the shore and I've been riding on this train so long I can't tell if it's you or me who is driving us into the ground”. Most likely, it’s probably all of us. Driving literally into ground filling potholes with nitrogen laws and motions to pass for flying machines. Music driving us into the ground with knowledgeable intense ideas we can’t answer perhaps until it’s too late. Anyways, you should indulge in a little or a lot of questioning time, and take a peek into a great musician’s mind, which was gracious enough to give us a little insight.

[pic from rock-city radio]