![]() ![]() ![]() "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. 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. Over a brisk groove, Beck states his frustrations on opener "Elevator Music", a damning critique of prettified American culture. The deadpan delivery remains intact, but his anxiousness and anger are more pointed than before. 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 record also benefits from a future-sick quasi-concept worthy of Philip K. 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. But there are key variations that give the new album a cohesion its predecessor lacked. Ultimately, the same can be said for The Information, which is made from a similar scattershot, self-referencing pastiche.
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