Product Description

'The Information' is the seventh studio album from eclecticAmerican singer/songwriter Beck Hansen. Produced by Nigel Godrich - who worked with Beck on 'Sea Changes' and 'Mutations' - the album sees Beck return to the hip hop inspired sound that graced his earlier releases while managing to retain the introspective sound that appeared on his Godrich produced albums. The single 'Cellphone's Dead' is also included.

Track Listing

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. 1000BPM
12. Motorcade
13. The Information
14. Movie Theme
15. The Horrible Fanfare / Landslide / Exoskeleton
16. Inside Out
17. This Girl That I Know

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8823 in Music
• Released on: 2006-10-02
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 68 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Old-school Beck fans rejoice - The Information finds Beck Hansen in goofy mood for the first time since Midnite Vultures, chucking out inspired wisecracks and surrealist couplets like the sombre, acoustic-tinged moods of 2002's Sea Change never happened. Produced by sometime Beck collaborator Nigel Godrich, last seen working on Thom Yorke's The Eraser, The Information is a strange mix of bluesy Americana rootsiness, wonky hip-hop beats and cosmic synthesiser, all wound together in accordance with Beck's fried, futuristic, utterly individual vision.

Most importantly, it's enjoyable and instantly accessible. The opening "Elevator Music" recalls the free-wheeling spirit of "Where It's At", all rolling beats, clacking Tropicalia scraper and distant melodica, while the excellent "Cellphone's Dead" imagines "Voodoo curses, Bible tongues/Voices coming from the mangled lungs" atop a track that veers between squelchy hip hop and Screamadelica-style acoustic strum. And sure, it gets weird - see the broiling, funky cyberpunk narrative "1000 BPM" ("Telemarketing people with cellular headsets on their skulls/Selling you wisdom from a plexiglass prism,") or the 12-minute finale "Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton", which ends with a hushed conversation about travelling into space, possibly born of Beck's membership of Hollywood celeb-religion Scientology - but the out-there moments bookend some of Beck's finest, funnest material in years. If you lost him for a bit there, now's time to tune back in. --Louis Pattison

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Customer Reviews

I'm disappointed.
It pains me to give a Beck album such a low rating, but for me this album is as featureless as the blank graph paper cover it comes in. Yes, as a previous reviewer said, the fact that you can design your own sleeve is the best feature. I designed mine before I'd listened to the album. If I'd listened first, I might not have put any stickers on it at all.

My cover depicts the little furry guy handing a guitar to Beck. I've broken the rules a little to add a speech bubble and a word in biro - the little guy imploring "Play?" of our hero. Beck looks non-plussed. In fact, on "The Information" he sounds non-plussed.

I wish I could say otherwise, but this album seems to be vapid and vacant. There's no emotion here. Beck seems to be sleep-talking through his lyrics, and musically the arrangements are very sparse, with the most interesting aspects being the little beeps and sound effects in the background.

But woah there. Don't let this bring you down. Beck holds special status. He's infallible. If you don't like him - you're wrong. So, I can say what I like about "The Information", I can provide whatever evidence I see fit, but it doesn't matter. Beck is beyond reproach. This album clearly just isn't for me. At least he's not treading water, trying to recapture former glories and re-write old tunes to be something new.

Bog standard Beck
Whenever Beck releases a great album you can guarantee that the follow up will be a real clunker, and The Information is no exception. There are no standout tracks, the songs all sound pretty much the same, and if I didn't know better I'd say that he knocked the album out in 5 minutes then phoned in the results. Unless you're a hardcore Beck fan then you won't find much here to enjoy. In fact the best thing about this release is playing with the stickers that come with it - says it all really.

Beck is a riddle wrapped inside an enigma, wrapped inside a devil's haircut, packed into obtuse metaphors that say nothing
At the end of "Brazil", Robert De Niro's character, Harry Tuttle disappears. Tuttle is caught inside a windstorm, absorbed, and eaten by stray paper. First a floating invoice sticks to his legs, then another, then submerged under the paper, the paper is torn apart and.. there's nothing under there. And that's how I see Beck. Underneath it all, is there anything there?

Despite my love of Beck, I find something about Beck hard to approach, almost academic. As if Beck was an imitation of a human being, an assorted collection of cool hip cultural references and borrowings masquerading for a personality. Even his more low-key records - the largely exasperated and maudlin "Mutations" and "Sea Change" - seem almost exercises in creating Art For The Sad. As if all of this thing called music, art, emotion, was a project, an affectation. That deep inside the artist Beck, Beck the person was hiding. And no artist tells the truth more than when he wears a mask. Or does he?

In "The Information" - his third album in a year - Beck steps out of his stylistic prison and just does what he wants to do. Unlike other albums, the wilfully eclectic "OdeLay", the Prince-1984-clone "Midnite Vultures", and the tijuana tinged "Guero", Beck lets it hang loose, and sets himself free. "Think I'm In Love" bristles with an honesty not alwayts seen in his music - think I'm in love, but it makes me kinda nerous to say so, he sings/drawls in his monotone. The tone is kept throughout the album - Beck as somehow revealing more of himself than ever before.

Sometimes the greatest singers in the world are liars. Actors. Whitney Houston there, her lip trembling for the umpteenth version of "I Will Always Love You", Mary J Blige's hysterical overblown vomiting of "One", - they're liars. Sometimes, in fact, almost all the time, what we mean, what we really believe, is nothing more a steady tone, a calm voice, a whisper in your ear. And it's here, with Beck's attempts at soulful that is limited by his range, that he becomes more sincere than a brazillion Whitneys. (How many is a Brazillion anyway?).

Versimilitude is the tone of "The Information". There's little extraneous information here, no wasted words. The sleeve is uncharactistically minimal, a grid and a name . It's as if Beck wants to cut the crap, strip it down, and teach us how to face the music. Aside from a minor discursion with the `final' track , a meandering ten minute Flaming-Lips style spookfest called "The Horrible Fanfare", The Information barely puts a foot wrong. Very possibly his best album yet.