Album reviews: Beck – Morning Phase

Beck's Morning Phase harks harks back to the classic singer-songwriter era.

Beck performs at the We Hate Hurricanes benefit concert in Los Angeles in 2012. Michael Kovac / Getty Images for AmeriCares / AFP

Beck Morning Phase (Capitol) ⋆⋆⋆⋆

On his arrival in 1994 with the laconic hit Loser, Beck Hansen was hailed as a trailblazer for irony in rock, spritzing away the self-regarding angst of grunge in favour of a new alternative sensibility: one steeped in pop-cultural collage, thrift-store style and goofy self-deprecation.

Yet what has been striking is the way the Los Angeles resident’s music has come to reveal a deep undercurrent of melancholy. Morning Phase, his 11th long-player, has been described as a sister piece to 2002’s Sea Change. That record was a downbeat acoustic lament to the end of a relationship. The sorrow winding through Morning Phase feels more opaque, although interviews promoting the release found Beck discussing a spinal injury that left him uncertain he would ever record again. Perhaps the title hides a double meaning: mourning phase. Certainly, the sadness here lingers like grief. “Don’t leave me on my own,” he pleads, on the lead single Blue Moon.

It might be an acoustic album, but Morning Phase is in no way stripped down. Richly scored with piano and strings, hillbilly twang and lilting vocal harmonies, it feels very Los Angeles in the way it harks back to the singer-songwriter music that rose from the city’s Laurel Canyon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Morning is the album’s proper opener (following a brief orchestral introduction of Cycle); a gentle piece where Beck declares “this morning/I let down all my defences”. There’s a cowboy swagger to Say Goodbye, but its curious chord changes and ghostly backing vocals walk it down an eerie road. Country Down, meanwhile, is country-rock in a classicist mould; a sweet shuffle of lap steel and harmonica recalling Gram Parsons and Crosby, Stills & Nash.

Beck has described the folksy sound of Morning Phase as “formative” to him. It is the music that he grew up with, only to push to the sidelines in his rebellious youth. For those who recall the showman Beck, the snake-hipped funkateer of former disco album Midnite Vultures, delicate homilies like Blackbird Chain and the Simon & Garfunkel-like Turn Away might feel somewhat reverent, lacking in mischief. But there’s a fluency and feeling here that makes this a far superior record to 2008’s somewhat forced Modern Guilt. If you believe reports, there’s another, poppier Beck record due to land later in the year. This will more than do for now, though. Morning Phase is a cold sort of dawn but one wrapped up warm against the elements; its calmness lies in sincerity and truths softly spoken.