As bored as I lookFrom the thematically unrelated files, other than I couldn't get my thoughts on Jamie Lidell's Jim off my chest fast enough, and dormancy is death, yo:
Beck - Modern Guilt Danger Mouse is like relish: I'm ambivalent when it's available, and rarely notice when its not. The man's tally is thus: the better-than-average Demon Days with Damon Albarn's Gorillaz, Gnarls Barkley's one pantheon single (uh, "Crazy") and two otherwise mediocre albums, a couple of so-so collaborations with The Rapture, The Black Keys last, mostly forgettable record, and The Grey Album, which was 90% provocation, 10% interesting music. So I'm happy to tell you that Modern Guilt, his "return-to-form" collaboration with "man without a country" Beck, is actually a taught little listen, free from the faux-hop excesses of the boring Guero and turgid The Information. It's a kind of rock album, though Beck's cadences of late are pretty much stuck in languid California dude gear, so whatever. The songs run about three minutes a pop, roll forward like Rommel across North Africa, and cut off at the end like a sheet of two-ply. The high points are the low points and vice versa, but the rising tide has carried Mr. Hansen's boat to the point where consistency is a virtue rather than a mind-numbing vice. In other words, this is the first album Beck has made since Sea Change that is not an ersatz Odelay; in other words, it is his first "good" album since then, though I use the term advisedly.
David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack This is the soundtrack from the D.A. Pennebaker film documenting Bowie's final Ziggy concert, marking the end of his most durable persona and, in effect, his trajectory as a teen pop idol. Later Bowie might have been better, weirder, artier, but he would never again have the same main circuit connection to the youth market, certainly not in America, at any rate; ergo, the beginning of the end, or rather, the end of the beginning. Bowie has the rare distinction of having released three superb "official" live albums (pending, of course, the forthcoming Live Santa Monica '72), and of these, Ziggy is the definitive portrait of his glam era road show, capturing the cream of not only Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane, but also 1971's portentous Hunky Dory and a rip-roaring cover of The Velvet Underground's "White Light/White Heat." The vocal performances are enthusiastic if drained; while he can't hit the high notes throughout, David skillfully bends without breaking, and the phrasing lends him a new weariness in keeping with the Weimar-via-Chuck Berry tenor of his material. The band, led by guitarist and creative co-equal Mick Ronson, is shit hot throughout, and you wonder what compelled Bowie to fire them. Of course, then Station to Station arrived and you forgot the question altogether. Or you forgot Bowie altogether, which would be to your detriment.
