Beck - Morning Phase

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.

On the radio the other morning I heard what I thought was an oldie by the Moody Blues. It turned out to be “Blue Moon” from the new album. I will not be rushing to the store to buy it next Monday, in common with billions.

The easy-listening arrangements are slow as molasses and twice as treacly, but in a way that's sort of post-rock or something. I sort of figured at least one critic would cultivate a perverse crush for this dreadful album.

"say goodbye" is lovely. pretty reserved and impressionist. great interplay of guitar and banjo. "blue moon" is not quite as strong but it is still a solid song. a little on the schmaltzy side of the spectrum though.

"Turn Away," with its Simon and Garfunkel touchstones, is pretty incredible.

absolutely. there are lots of great songs on this album, i don't understand the cynic posts in this thread. i am not sure but this could well be his best album together with "mutations". it's much much better than the terrible "sea change" which was just a pale copy of 70s serge gainsbourg and nick drake. beck has finally found himself.

heard some of this in a Starbucks and thought it was fine. My two-year-old liked it.

oh god, what have I become? I actually liked this on first spin. suppose I should be ashamed of myself now? perhaps I should pop in to Starbucks and buy something.

Starbucks is basically the only toddler-friendly destination within a five block walk of me. Speaking of what have I become.

I guess if the option is playing the Frozen soundtrack again or the new Beck, i'd put on the new Beck.

Given all the crazy and often amazing stuff Beck's been doing the last few years, I have to imagine this pleasant, straightforward record is half "gotta feed the monkey" (via the NPR crowd), half mess with all the people on ILM who haven't been privy to the stuff he's been doing off-radar. For ILMers to hear and assume "Beck's gone soft in his old age, what a putz". Meanwhile, the rest of us get stuff like the "Grey/Afro" cover (above) and the Glass reinterpretation and the whatever-the-hell-it-is 24-minute 12" single "Gimme".

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

heard some of this in a Starbucks and thought it was fine. My two-year-old liked it.

― Burt Stuntin (Hurting 2), Tuesday, February 18, 2014 2:53 PM (Yesterday)

always read this as butt stuntin

have to imagine this pleasant, straightforward record is half "gotta feed the monkey" (via the NPR crowd), half mess with all the people on ILM who haven't been privy to the stuff he's been doing off-radar.

huh?

I hear Beck spends a lot of time thinking about how to fuck with ILM

okay so i re-listened to spotify-available "wave", "waking light" and "blue moon" this morning to find that i still quite enjoy all three. post-amnesiac yacht rock? yes, please. "blue moon" may be bit shmaltzy, as alex in manhattan says, but only in the best sense: sweet, lush and gently heart-tugging.

not sure about the album as a whole (i'm currently streaming it thru NPR, its natural habitat). "morning" starts things on a thematically-appropriate but nearly soporific note. pleasant enough, but cloudy to the point of vacancy. "heart is a drum" perks things up a bit, adds a pulse and some nicely cosmic trip detailing, but wouldn't do much to dissipate one's growing impression that this is more gentle soundtrack to knowledge-working america's bleary-eyed coffee house ayems than a collection of individually attention-worthy songs. alex otm about "say goodbye" though: it's the album's first standout track, and followed by the gorgeous "blue moon", makes what came before feel like a 10-minute intro hum. yoga poses or w/e.

not gonna liveblog the whole thing, but "unforgiven" is sounding pretty nice too. initially nocturnal and even a bit menacing (lol, wrote that before the on-the-nose lyrics kicked in), though it eventually does lay the schmaltz on a good deal thicker than i'd prefer ("somewhere unforgiven i will wait for you"). as a side note, i'm loving this album's production, maybe moreso than the songs, and that's by no means a slam. where "unforgiven" is concerned, the spooky canyons of reverb, dark ambience and streaks of foreboding noise keep beck's goopier lyrical tendencies in check and provide a nice lead-in to the badalamenti-esque "wave".

"Turn Away," with its Simon and Garfunkel touchstones, is pretty incredible.

― timellison, Monday, February 17, 2014 7:50 PM (2 days ago)

$$$

Is the 'off-radar' stuff all the stuff that I've read about/seen embedded in every music site over the past several years?

I heard those cover albums, they were pretty good, but also pretty boring.

no - he released 3-4 standalone singles which were pretty unexpected and exciting ("Gimme", "It Won't be Long" and another one I think

Defriended:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDSjOM42HZU

Gimme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwn4tK5ySNU

I won't be long:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLIBuuJnQHg

"wave" is so depressing

"isooooooolaaaaaaation. isooooooolaaaaaaation." my psychology is too fragile to handle this tbh

smoke less

smoke more

I listened to this whole thing at lunch on headphones, and two things kept coming up:

1) If this was not Beck I probably wouldn't make it through one of these songs.
2) Half of these songs sound like they are _this close_ to turning into the chorus for "Comfortably Numb". This happens in multiple songs.
3) It actually sounds like the arrangements are stripped down but in reality they are not, they are just boring enough to sound like nothing is happening.

Eh, that's three things. The album has turned my mind to mush.

This album is one monotonous, dreary blur. Good Starbucks music though, I'll give him that.

Emperor is right. Dull songs with REVERBbbbbbb in place of tunes or anything novel.

my reaction to the album oscillates between being mildly soothed and strongly disgusted

this album is like being given the choice between the blue pill and the red pill by someone who has somehow already managed to take the blue one. can't believe I just made a Matrix reference but that's simply where this album took me.

1) The three Beck songs baaderonixx posted are great.

2) Morning Phase sounds nothing like them.

**shrug**

I like it. It's not super exciting, but it sure is lovely.

^^ pretty much my reaction

blackbird chain slays

This is a really good album for mornings when you aren't fully awake yet. I still think it's boring but it gets better after repeated listens.

'Blackbird Chain' is probably my favorite song.