Beck is Back with "Looking for a Sign"

After a multi-year hiatus from releasing new material, our hero Beck Hansen is back with a fabulous new song called "Looking for a Sign," which appears on the soundtrack to the new comedy Jeff Who Lives at Home, starring Jason Segel, Ed Helms and Susan Sarandon. (You can see the trailer here.)

"Looking for a Sign" is a lovely tune which finds Beck in his Sea Change acoustic singer-songwriter mode, which is quite possibly my favorite Beck mode. Other Beck modes include satirical Gen-X slacker, white rapper, Mississippi Delta Blues appropriator, post-psychedelic visionary, junkyard curator and seemingly sane Scientologist.



Beck's last album, the Danger Mouse-produced Modern Guilt, came out in 2008. Beck has kept himself busy over the past few years producing records for fellow aging alt-slackers Stephen Malkmus Charlotte Gansbourg and Thurston Moore. He also does Beck's record club where he and fellow muicians recreate classic albums from The Velvet Underground and Nico to Yanni's Live at the Acropolis. It's an idea more interesting in theory than execution, but well worth checking out here.

Beck is playing some rock festivals this summer, including the Governor's Ball in New York City this June, so let's hope this new activity is signs of a full-length LP. Until we know for sure, let's go out with my favorite song from Modern Guilt, "Gamma Ray," performed live on Letterman.



Buy "Looking for a Sign" on iTunes here.