Beck - Morning Phase

"I just wish "a more focused Beck" didn't sound like Air" or air for that matter

i think that his move to major labels just made him a worse artist, i don't care if he does the old stuff he did again, just wish his newer stuff was better.

(he aint no SY or Nirvana for that matter)

New Moon is streaming everywhere. and it's meh

strange song - might be a grower, but I'm a bit tired with that vocal style & FX he seems to be have been using for the last 10 years.

i am amused at how "Morning" is practically a carbon copy of "Golden Age"

I love his early stuff so much but he hasn't made an interesting record since Midnite Vultures

And he never will again, it's not like he's going to give up all his world comforts and marriage and get lost and weird again

Love this track.

this seems like it could be good. but i feel like it's already obvious it will be considered beck's comeback album. like, it will resemble "sea change" and also be beck's highest p&j charter since that album. most people who don't know that he released "song reader" -- an album that's not actually something you can put on and listen to! -- last year are thinking "what happened to beck?" totally the right time for him to be like "yo, here i am." and also capitol's probably willing to spend a lot on him since he's new to their stable. ba da bing ba da ba it's like "beck we hardly knew ye!" lots of middle-aged rock critics out there who have a lot invested in believing that "odelay" wasn't a fluke.

this album is embarrassing.

(Harmonica solo)

I miss his sense of humor

More like Boring Phase

Is he trying to capitalize on post-Mumford and Sons shtick or something

more like trying to capitalize by recycling himself, doing generic indie folk

I forgot Beck invented generic indie folk

It's mainly the production and arrangements that don't appeal to me wrt post-00s Beck. Like if he forced himself to make this album on a 4-track it would somehow be WAYYYY better.

Like if "Today Has Been a Fucked Up Day" was recorded now it would have 64 layers of vocals and tambourines and people stomping and stuff.

he is the godfather of it, in a way...

but now it seems Bon Iver took his place

xpost

yeah, trying too hard to be "pretty"..

Wish he would record Ozzy Pt. 2

The flipside of calling this generic would be to say that it's archetypal. I like its subtleties, like the contrasting melodic contour in the second verse and the way the chorus is segmented. Also think his voice sounds great.

http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/20140119_beck_morning_phase_91.jpg
that is the cover not the hideous thing upthread.

"new moon" sounds promising, i quite like the banjo playing.

Start at track 3

i've lsitened to this record twice now and i might even listen to it again at some point

wow, really expected this to be better

I can think of few big artists I have lower expectations for than Beck...

It's a bummer this does seem rather tepid on first listen, considering all the amazing stuff he's been doing very under the radar the last few years. The Record Club 'Oar' full-album cover remains one of my favorite albums of the 2010s (http://www.beck.com/recordclub/index.php/category/skip-spence-oar). And this is one of the very best pieces of music I've heard in the last couple years, from any time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaKrnjY8LiY

^ this. Beck and Yoshinori Sunahara, Cornelius or Shugo Tokumaru collab would be ace

― MaresNest, Friday, January 17, 2014 11:52 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

nah, not cornelius, it'd be humiliating. fantasma >>>>>>>>>> beck

I mean, damn:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJonU9233Do

um ok wow that^ is incredible

eugene gallagher 3 years ago

i love this song. i sang it w beck at the 94 lalapalooza. very random. ck out my alt country cover of it

After listening to “Morning Phase” almost fifty times, I can’t find a single thing wrong with it. Even if you listen to popular music all day, every day, you don’t get many albums like this in your lifetime.

sasha frere jones done lost his damn mind http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2014/02/17/140217crmu_music_frerejones

lolllll

Do we like this? I'm hearing great things.

i don't think it's as good as sea change. it's very pleasant tho. maybe it'll grow on me.

i like this just fine, it is very much just Sea Change 2 in sound though so if that doesn't qualify as 'more of a good thing' for you then you won't like it

holy @ grey/afro. want a album of THAT SONG.

havent heard it yet but disappointed this turns out to be just Sea Change 2, as the recent standalone singles had a distinctive and novel sound.

Love SFJ for going so unapologetically crazy about this record. I don't hear what he's hearing but good luck to him. It's so unlike the usual New Yorker voice.

Six months from now he is really going to regret writing this review, and the New Yorker are going to regret publishing it. I'd like the usual New Yorker voice back please.

Also, Gordon Lightfoot is not “Los Angeles rock.”

I thought you were all in favour of unbridled passion Marcello? Obviously I wouldn't want this style every week.

Trouble is I don’t hear any passion, bridled or otherwise, on this record. What I do hear are a lot of below par Air Supply and Pablo Cruise tributes. It’s no All Love’s Legal, that’s for sure (they should just give that the Mercury now and have done with it).

assume DL meant sfj's review showed unbridled passion

haven't heard the album, but "blue moon" and "waking light" are hitting me real nice this morning. not passionate by any stretch, but sharp tunes dressed up all wistful and invitingly atmospheric. sounds ideally well-suited to chemical enhancement, but i'm not gonna take things any farther than coffee and a chair by the window.

Oh, I see, you mean in the review. Nothing wrong with being passionate about a record you love – if he isn’t just besotted with it for the moment – but you have to back up your passion with more than clichés like “the feeling of re-creating the American song” (how? In what ways? Doing old songs that are out of copyright so you don’t have to pay royalties? The age-old tale of privileged whiteboy ripping off black culture?) or “an unqualified embrace of sheer beauty” (what does that even mean?). It’s the same unquestioned, unchallenged fawning you get whenever Bowie or Prince decide to burp out something, rather than questioning: why should anybody be praising this guy JUST because he Did Something 20 Years Ago? Why not just buy No Other or Grievous Angel and have done with it?

self-correction: "the feeling of re-creating the DNA of American song."

I think if you're listening to a new album 50 times you're doing more than giving kneejerk praise to a critical fave. SFJ was dismayed (ridiculously imo) by Let England Shake so he doesn't just hand out Rolling Stone-style raves to the usual suspects. Rightly or wrongly, he has a sincere love for this album and I like his OTT love for it more than I like the music. Personally I think Morning Phase doubles down on the flaws of Sea Change — derivative arrangements, one-note emotion — with lesser songs. It's nice enough but i can't imagine being deeply moved by it.

No, OTT love is one thing but when it gets in the way of the music it's a hindrance. Music criticism should be at the service of the music. He's basically telling punters to go spend money on something which really isn't much more than a Xerox of far superior music. Can anybody recommend to any newcomer to this music that they buy anything but the very best, and Morning Phase is never that.

well maybe let him be the judge of what is a xerox of superior music

Streaming this on NPR - finding it much lighter and airy than Sea Change. Pleasant but boy does it feel like middle-aged music.

This is very heartwarming:

http://www.etonline.com/music/160033_kanye_west_finally_listens_to_beck/

@justinbieber
This @beck album is incredible

well I just received this as a present

why is Beck so sad

the gentrification of silverlake?

forced back into Scientology, had to dump his old GF, hasn't cheered up since Sea Change

the happy party vibes of guero always seemed forced to me (still some jams on it)

Why is his voice auto tuned on this audiophile album?

I liked the Oar cover album a lot, and I have plenty of love for earlier sad Beck but this just sounds so flaccid and mopey, the pace of everything is near glacial, like its goal is to help me take a nap

i remember i used to fall asleep listening to sea change when it came out - i felt that was one of its great attributes!

hey I like naps too

not really what I want/expected from Beck, there's better nap-inducing music out there for me. the industry love for this album is based more on industry politics than anything else bu it's still weird to think that anyone would rate this sleepy fairly generic and hook-free album ALBUM OF THE YEAR I mean waht

was pretty sure the endgame of the whole beck / kanye kerfuffle this year was going to be kanye embracing scientology