For an artist whose career has been a long, strange trip, Beck's 10th album is a short, relatively traditional one. On Modern Guilt, the pop melting pot furthers the 1960s-style psychedelic explorations of 1998's Mutations, but lacks the sun-kissed pleasures or merry pranks of comparable neo-psych artists like Caribou and Super Furry Animals. Producer Danger Mouse (Gorillaz, Gnarls Barkley) does a nice job of pushing the aesthetic past nostalgia, with skittering Kid A-like beats on "Replica" and layers of well-placed effects on standard up-tempo Beck banger "Gamma Ray." The bass thunders with a heavy hip-hop vibe on everything from the Beta Band haze of opener "Orphans" to the lovely, sad finale "Volcano." The shuffling "Walls" is a potential hit somewhere between Magical Mystery Tour and Outkast. It's too bad Beck's free association lyrics are more distracting than arresting nowadays. On techno-accented "Youthless," Beck warns, "This life, it goes by fast." Well, yeah. In the meantime, here's an above-average 21st-century soundtrack for turning on, tuning in and dropping out.

-- Marc Hogan