XL Recordings

Modern Guilt just got a little more modern-sounding. Beck's "Gamma Ray" shares the general 1960s psych-pop vibe of the rest of his Danger Mouse-produced latest album, with effects-laden backing vocals and a slightly fuzzed guitar riff that might've been preserved in a fallout shelter since the first Nixon administration. Pocket, aka the Burnside Project frontman Richard Jankovich-- who last year remixed Radiohead's cover of Björk's "Unravel"-- has dressed up "Gamma Ray" in the garb of another nuke-obsessed decade. "Gamma Ray (Pocket Mix)" trades some guitar for a melange of gooey, romantic synths, to conjure, like M83's excellent Saturdays=Youth, the outsize emotion of 1980s teen-movie fare. Except instead of Anthony Michael Hall, this one has Beck singing about melting icecaps and a woman with a "cactus crown." Background vocals are clipped from Jay Reatard's cover.

MP3:> Beck: "Gamma Ray (Pocket Mix)"
[from Modern Guilt; out now on XL/ Interscope]