Modern Guilt
Encyclopedia
Modern Guilt is the eleventh studio album
by American
alternative musician Beck
. It was released on July 8, 2008. The album fulfills Beck's recording contract
with Interscope Records
.
Modern Guilt features two contributions by Cat Power
and was produced by Beck
and Danger Mouse
.
A vinyl
edition of the album, including download codes for 320-kbit/s MP3
s direct from the master vinyl, was released on July 22, 2008.
and the Canadian Albums Chart
at number four, and gave Beck his first ever Top 10 placing on the UK Albums Chart
, peaking at number nine. The album has also been Beck's best charting album in Australia
, reaching 13. In the US, the album sold 84,000 copies in its first week. Although successful, this does not match the first week sales of The Information
, which were 99,000. In Canada, the album sold over 6,000 copies in its first week.
The album received generally positive reviews upon release, earning a rating of 77 out of 100 on Metacritic
. Filter
said of the album "Beck is somehow more aware while puffing out his waves of broken poetry as opposed to the casual seed-spitting he has been known to turn to," and Allmusic said that it was "an effective dosage of 21st century paranoia." Some negative reviews, such as PopMatters
, said that the album "lacks the unique resonating timbres one is accustomed to with Beck," and The Guardian
called it "a vanity project".
In December 2008, Modern Guilt was nominated for Best Alternative Album
at the 51st Grammy Awards, but it later lost to In Rainbows
by Radiohead
.
except "Walls" written by Beck, Danger Mouse
, Paul Guiot and Paul Piot.
Produced by Danger Mouse and Beck.
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...
by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
alternative musician Beck
Beck
Beck Hansen is an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known by the stage name Beck...
. It was released on July 8, 2008. The album fulfills Beck's recording contract
Recording contract
A recording contract is a legal agreement between a record label and a recording artist , where the artist makes a record for the label to sell and promote...
with Interscope Records
Interscope Records
Interscope Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group that currently operates as one third of UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group.-History:...
.
Modern Guilt features two contributions by Cat Power
Cat Power
Charlyn Marie Marshall , also known as Chan Marshall or by her stage name Cat Power, is an American singer/songwriter and occasional actress and model. Cat Power was originally the name of Marshall's first band, but has come to refer to her musical projects with various backing bands...
and was produced by Beck
Beck
Beck Hansen is an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known by the stage name Beck...
and Danger Mouse
Danger Mouse
Brian Joseph Burton , better known by his stage name Danger Mouse, is an American musician, songwriter and producer. He came to prominence in 2004 when he released The Grey Album, which combined vocal performances from Jay-Z's The Black Album with instrumentals from The Beatles' White Album.He...
.
A vinyl
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
edition of the album, including download codes for 320-kbit/s MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
s direct from the master vinyl, was released on July 22, 2008.
Reception
The album entered both the Billboard 200Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
and the Canadian Albums Chart
Canadian Albums Chart
The Canadian Albums Chart is the official album sales chart in Canada. It is compiled every Wednesday by U.S.-based music sales tracking company Nielsen Soundscan, and published every Thursday by Jam! Canoe and Billboard, along with its sister charts the Canadian Singles Chart and the Canadian BDS...
at number four, and gave Beck his first ever Top 10 placing on the UK Albums Chart
UK Albums Chart
The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...
, peaking at number nine. The album has also been Beck's best charting album in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
, reaching 13. In the US, the album sold 84,000 copies in its first week. Although successful, this does not match the first week sales of The Information
The Information
The Information is the tenth studio album by American alternative rock musician Beck, released in October 2006 on Interscope Records. It was produced and mixed by longtime Beck collaborator Nigel Godrich. Recording began in 2003 concurrently with Guero, but the album was not completed until 2006...
, which were 99,000. In Canada, the album sold over 6,000 copies in its first week.
The album received generally positive reviews upon release, earning a rating of 77 out of 100 on Metacritic
Metacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
. Filter
Filter (magazine)
FILTER, the publication that promises us that "Good music will prevail," is a seasonal American music and off-beat entertainment magazine. It features commentary and photos of up-and-coming musicians and filmmakers ranging from actors to writer-directors...
said of the album "Beck is somehow more aware while puffing out his waves of broken poetry as opposed to the casual seed-spitting he has been known to turn to," and Allmusic said that it was "an effective dosage of 21st century paranoia." Some negative reviews, such as PopMatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...
, said that the album "lacks the unique resonating timbres one is accustomed to with Beck," and The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
called it "a vanity project".
In December 2008, Modern Guilt was nominated for Best Alternative Album
Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album
The Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album is an award presented to recording artists for quality albums in the alternative rock genre at the Grammy Awards, a ceremony that was established in 1958 and originally called the Gramophone Awards...
at the 51st Grammy Awards, but it later lost to In Rainbows
In Rainbows
In Rainbows is the seventh studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was first released on 10 October 2007 as a digital download self-released, that customers could order for whatever price they saw fit, followed by a standard CD release in most countries during the last week of 2007. The...
by Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...
.
Accolades
| Publication | Country | Accolade | Year | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q Q (magazine) Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology... |
UK | 50 Best Albums of the Year | 2008 | #23 |
| Rolling Stone Rolling Stone Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J... |
US | 50 Best Albums of the Year | 2008 | #8 |
| WERS WERS In June 2007, WERS inaugurated a translator station on 96.5 MHz in New Bedford, Massachusetts, relaying WERS's programming to New Bedford and nearby communities... Boston |
US | 50 Best Albums of the Year | 2008 | #6 |
Acoustic sessions
In July through September 2009, Beck uploaded videos on a weekly basis of full band "unplugged" performances of each track on the record. These videos appeared exclusively on beck.com and vimeo.com. These acoustic sessions had been recorded earlier in the year, following Beck's tour of Japan. Four unspecified tracks are to be released on an official limited edition EP.Release history
| Region | Date | Label | Format | Catalog | Ref |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| World | July 8, 2008 | DGC DGC Records DGC Records is an American record label, owned by Universal Music Group, and currently operates as an auxiliary label of Interscope Records.-Company history:... |
Digital download Music download A music download is the transferral of music from an Internet-facing computer or website to a user's local computer. This term encompasses both legal downloads and downloads of copyright material without permission or payment... |
— | |
| Argentina Argentina Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires... |
CD Compact Disc The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,... |
1775441 | |||
| Australia Australia Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area... |
1775441 | ||||
| Canada Canada Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean... |
B001150702 | ||||
| United States United States The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district... |
B0011507-02 | ||||
| LP LP record The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry... |
B0011630-01 | ||||
| United Kingdom United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages... |
CD | B001150702 | |||
| XL XL Recordings XL Recordings is a British independent record label owned by Richard Russell. It originated as a 1989 offshoot of Beggars Banquet Records.Though only releasing an average of six albums a year, XL Recordings has worked with The Prodigy, Radiohead, The White Stripes, Dizzee Rascal, M.I.A., Vampire... |
XLCD369 | ||||
| LP | XLLP 369 | ||||
| Europe Europe Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting... |
|||||
| CD | XLCD369 |
Track listing
All songs written by BeckBeck
Beck Hansen is an American musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, known by the stage name Beck...
except "Walls" written by Beck, Danger Mouse
Danger Mouse
Brian Joseph Burton , better known by his stage name Danger Mouse, is an American musician, songwriter and producer. He came to prominence in 2004 when he released The Grey Album, which combined vocal performances from Jay-Z's The Black Album with instrumentals from The Beatles' White Album.He...
, Paul Guiot and Paul Piot.
Produced by Danger Mouse and Beck.
- "Orphans" (with vocals by Chan MarshallCat PowerCharlyn Marie Marshall , also known as Chan Marshall or by her stage name Cat Power, is an American singer/songwriter and occasional actress and model. Cat Power was originally the name of Marshall's first band, but has come to refer to her musical projects with various backing bands...
, bass by Jason FalknerJason FalknerJason Falkner is an American pop and rock musician. Active since the late 1980s, he has performed with several bands. In addition to releasing several albums as a solo artist, he is a prolific session musician and producer who has contributed to dozens of other recordings by other bands and...
) – 3:15 - "Gamma RayGamma Ray (song)"Gamma Ray" is a song by Beck. It is seemingly inspired by the surf-rock songs of the 1960s, but with ghostly moans and lyrics on the state of the world. It was released as the second single from his album Modern Guilt on August 11, 2008. The single peaked at #19 on the U.S. Billboard Modern Rock...
" – 2:57 - "ChemtrailsChemtrails (song)"Chemtrails" is a 2008 single by American musician Beck. The song, taken from his eighth studio album Modern Guilt, was released digitally on June 22, 2008.The artwork for the single uses a design based on Houndstooth patterning....
" (with bass and guitar by Jason Falkner) – 4:40 - "Modern Guilt" – 3:14
- "YouthlessYouthless"Youthless" is a song by Beck. It was released as the third single from his album Modern Guilt. The single release of the song features an alternative mix of "Youthless" and a non album song entitled "Half & Half". The 7" inch single is pressed on white vinyl...
" – 3:00 - "Walls" (with vocals by Chan Marshall) – 2:22
- samples from the track "Amour, Vacances et Baroque", from the 1969 library music album Dance and Mood Music Vol. 4
- "Replica" – 3:25
- "Soul of a Man" – 2:36
- "Profanity Prayers" – 3:43
- "Volcano" – 4:26
- Extended Version
- "Vampire Voltage No.6" - 2:20
- "Bonfire Blondes" - 2:26
- "Half & Half" - 3:21
- "Necessary Evil" - 3:35
- "Gamma RayGamma Ray (song)"Gamma Ray" is a song by Beck. It is seemingly inspired by the surf-rock songs of the 1960s, but with ghostly moans and lyrics on the state of the world. It was released as the second single from his album Modern Guilt on August 11, 2008. The single peaked at #19 on the U.S. Billboard Modern Rock...
" Video - 2:54 - "YouthlessYouthless"Youthless" is a song by Beck. It was released as the third single from his album Modern Guilt. The single release of the song features an alternative mix of "Youthless" and a non album song entitled "Half & Half". The 7" inch single is pressed on white vinyl...
" Video - 2:51 - "Modern Guilt" Video - 3:14
- "Replica" Video - 3:24
- Only available on United KingdomUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
iTunes StoreITunes StoreThe iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, with over 200,000 items to purchase, it is, as of April 2008, the number-one music vendor in the United States...