Consumer Guide Album

Beck: The Information [Interscope, 2006]
Because he's also the poster child of '90s irony, which morphed so neatly into the passivity '00s alt-rockers pit against evil, the poster child of information overload doesn't quite get down to cases here. But unlike Guero this one really has some war in it--makes "a kick drum sound like an SOS" and turns a homeless woman into a soldier in Iraq. The best song addresses a chronic problem clearly for once: "I think I'm in love and it makes me kind of nervous to say so." "Dark Star" despairs so resolutely it could make a dead man grateful. B+