What year is this anyway? Beck [ tickets ]'s new album, "The Information," sounds like a holdover from 1994, the year his ahead-of-the-curve breakthrough--you know, the one with "Loser"--hit the airwaves. For better or worse, "The Information," Beck's seventh album, takes us back to the future.

Combine the tongue-in-cheek, stream-of-consciousness raps of "Mellow Gold" with the smart songcraft of "Odelay" and what you get is "The Information." Lead track "Elevator Music" features such couplets as "Gutbucket and a bottle of paint/It's like the schoolhouse lights will never turn on again/'Til the bottom wears off on these high-heeled boots." Later, Beck might be talking about Bush's "War on Terror" when he soft raps, "Infidels swallowed/In a vanishing point/Ammunition souls shooting/Holes in the ozone/Widows tears/Washing a soldier's bones." Clearly, he still has a penchant for WTF lyrics.