Yesterday I listened to all 12 Beck albums in a row, in order of release date. They are, for the uninitiated:

1. Golden Feelings
2. A Western Harvest FIeld by Moonlight
3. Stereopathetic Soulmanure
4. Mellow Gold
5. One Foot in the Grave
6. Odelay
7. Mutations
8. Midnite Vultures
9. Sea Change
10. Guero
11. The Information
12. Modern Guilt

It was about 9.5 hours of music that took about 12.5 hours to listen to, including all my breaks. It was epic. A couple people asked me if doing this gave me any special insight into Beck’s music and career. The answer, I told them, is yes. Here are those insights:

1. The first three albums form a pretty harsh block. It’s not bad exactly, but it’s hard to listen to. Word of warning: these albums may drive your girlfriend out of the apartment in anger.
2. Midnite Vultures is probably my favourite Beck album. It’s brilliant.
3. One Foot in the Grave -> Odelay is a crazy weird transition.
4. The worst Beck album tracks are ‘Round the Bend’ off Sea Change and ‘Earthquake Weather’ off Guero.
5. Doing this won’t make you as sick of Beck as you would expect.

That’s it! Nothing terribly profound, but it did alter how I perceive the albums and a bunch of the tracks. If you have the time, I definitely recommend it.

Hello everyone, happy Beck’s birthday!

Modern Guilt should be out now everywhere, except in Japan. A few places apparently have a bonus 7″ with an extra track (“Vampire Voltage No. 6”) so if you’re interested keep an eye on that. I don’t honestly know all the details about what/where, maybe Newtron has been keeping better track, or you can share what you got and where in the comments here.

The European tour has been going strong, you can see some setlists for some of the shows over on Hijacked Flavors here (including some YouTube clips that I’ve linked to on the show pages). If anyone has any bootlegs or information about the shows that is missing, email us computergirls [at] whiskeyclone.net.

Enjoy the album, and remember, you can only listen to Beck music today!