Top Five Albums of 2008: Number Four

Beck - Modern Guilt

Today, we continue our weeklong series counting down the top albums of 2008. At this point, my list starts to get very muddy - there were at least six albums that seemed equally qualified for slots two through five, and I had one hell of a time sorting them out. Nonetheless, lists must be made (this principle is, I believe, the foundation of all music journalism), so here it is.

Beck - Modern Guilt

Beck has been making strangely beautiful and idiosyncratic indie-folk-pop-rock-hip-hop-whatever for as long as I can remember listening to popular music. I first encountered him in my early teens in the stacks of a local college radio station, where I unearthed a scratchy copy of "MTV Makes Me Wanna Smoke Crack," and albums like Mellow Gold and Odelay have been more or less fixtures in my collection ever since. But Modern Guilt is his first release in years to catch my attention so strongly.

There's a lot of great stuff going on here. Modern Guilt feels more effortless, avoiding the belaboring style that Beck sometimes displays without losing the underlying tension that's essential to his identity as an artist. It manages to be one of Beck's most listenable albums without losing its edge.

I think the success of Modern Guilt can be attributed in large part to production by Danger Mouse of Gnarls Barkley fame (more on this tomorrow). Danger Mouse styles himself an auteur, and like every record he touches, Modern Guilt displays an unmistakable cinematic quality. Many of the sounds here bear a clear resemblance to jazzy '60s Italian film soundtracks by the likes of Piero Piccioni. Polished little atmospheric touches sparkle throughout the album, rewarding repeated listens without growing so dense as to be overwhelming. Understated contributions by Cat Power on two tracks round things out nicely without seizing the spotlight.

Eric's take: Beck's Modern Guilt is, appropriately, quite a modern album, steeped in the dry and well-defined indie sounds that he's had no small hand in creating over the last decade, and reveling in today's lo-fi aesthetic (with lush, bass-heavy accents at "Walls" and "Volcano"). "Gamma Rays", "Modern Guilt", and "Profanity Prayers" stand out on an album of excellent tracks, but really there's no going wrong here. It's solid front to back and the only thing keeping it out of my own top five was the quality of all the albums eventually selected.

• Check out Eric's #4 pick

Scooter's take: Coming soon!

To track the rest of these articles, follow this tag: best-of-2008. We'll be here all week!

Cross-posted to ListenInMusic.com

© 2008 Evan Mix for Listen In. Some rights reserved.

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