Beck - The Information

Genre rock Publisher Interscope Records External Links Official Beck Website Official Interscope Records Website

Why, Beck, why? Why not simply title this record The Cruise instead of The Information? Why not make the cover art a heavily Photoshopped day-glo Warhol of Jim Anchower's pic and forgo the do-it-yourself stickers? I mean, yeah, thematically this album - what is it, your seven-hundredth? - packs more null pathos than a Hollywood Scientologist's mansion has unused floor space, but you haven't laid to digital tape a statement this compulsively listenable since Jordan's first return from retirement. "If I could forget myself/Find another lie to tell/If I had a soul to sell," you raspily rhyme on opener "Elevator Music," as if to warn us not to expect too much, again, and you're kinda sorta right - while there's plenty of Information to absorb, nothing really stands out. Which is fantastic, a blessing. You find plenty of (supposed) lies to sell us - heartbreak, boredom, faulty cellular service, existential disgust, and so on - but you sell them so surreptitiously and patiently, so in the shade of your own demi-legendary history of reinventing pop as, I guess, Beckology, and with such disinterested endurance that you've topped yourself without appearing to have broken a sweat, even when the time comes to break us off some awkward rhymes or acquiesce to your longtime producer's suggestion that you try ripping off Radiohead on "Nausea."