Song of the day

Beck, "Soldier Jane". Wouldn't it be nice to be Beck? To be able to take your shopping trolley along the endless aisles of the music supermarket, pulling off the shelves a bit of this, a bit of that, and, when you get home, throwing them into a big pot, adding some dada poetry, and hey presto, it's another album of Beck songs. An ingredient I didn't expect to see him using, however, was Simple Minds' "New Gold Dream '81-'84". But that's exactly what he employs on "Soldier Jane" from his most recent album, "The Information", in the process creating a song that, unusually for Beck, has a bit of emotional heft. Only a bit, admittedly, but at least that's a start.