War Child’s newest compilation – benefiting children affected by war – is structured around a premise that legendary artists pick modern day artists to cover their classics: Beck does a rousing, bluesy rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”, Lily Allen does a soft and ironically sweet cover of The Clash’s “Paper Planes”-sampled “Straight to Hell”,  Hot Chip dance-pops up Joy Division’s “Transmission, and TV on the Radio manages to make the first good cover of Bowie’s “Heroes” that this reviewer has ever heard; despite a few low points, (The Kinks clearly picked The Kooks to cover “Victoria” because of the similar names, and the results are quite boring, and Peaches’ can’t hold a candle to the badassness of Iggy Pop’s “Search and Destroy”) the whole thing paints a more promising portrait of the state of popular music then you’re likely to get from most sources and besides, once again, it’s all for a good cause so you should buy it anyway.

8.3 / 10

Astralwerks
February 24, 2009

Beck – Modern Guilt

July 8, 2008
Interscope
Rating: 4.2 / 5

The Music Rag One Sentence Review: Beck gets it right with this collection of excellent Danger Mouse-produced tracks, finally learning how to reign in his creative urges and get down to the basics, resulting in some of the best work of his career.

Best moments: “Gamma Ray” is a fuzzed-out piece of pop gold and “Chemtrails” is a serene and epic song with a great “Strawberry Fields Forever” ending. The closer, “Volcano”, sounds like a great lost track from Sea Change, with a bit of a Danger Mouse beat added to it.

Reatarded: Prolific and slightly scary garage punker Jay Reatard did a cover of “Gamma Ray” that appears on the single. Check it out at Last.fm or download it illegally on your own time.