Beck - Morning Phase

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.

This is a really good album for mornings when you aren't fully awake yet

Hah just like Sea Change this sounds very much like hangover music

Sea Change : Morning Phase :: heartache : backache

Nothing to do with the musical content, so forgive the side-step from such discussions with this post, but this situation makes me quite frustrated as a music retailer...

Vinyl for this was horribly under-pressed, at least in the UK.

On the day of release (yesterday) there was just one single (speculative) copy on Amazon, via the marketplace, at £10,000. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Morning-Phase-VINYL-Beck/dp/B00HHYEOV8/ I just cite that as evidence of the general scarcity on the first day of release, as no legitimate sellers (shops using Amazon marketplace, Amazon themselves, as examples) had enough copies to offer for sale beyond what had gone to curtailed/limited pre-orders.

Hard to fathom any decent reason why the record company et al would deliberately stick to a mere ~1000 copies on an album like this, when shops and online retailers and by extension the record-buying public were quite clearly clamouring for more. Well, I can think of reasons, but they're quite dispiriting.

St Vincent album is also in the same situation, from the same record company... http://www.amazon.co.uk/St-Vincent-VINYL/dp/B00H783104/

this is kind of a slog and the songs aren't great

but man this sounds like a million bucks! so well produced.

It does. I listened to it again this morning and it sounds so good. The arrangements are really nice. And the songs are great. And his singing is so good!

I listened to Stereopathetic Soul Manure again too. His voice is so nervous and wavy, and it's been a huge leap for him to get to this spot. I'm sure he doesn't want to hear/play some of those songs because the performances are super rough (though that is part of the charm). In a way it's sort of like Cornelius's artistic trajectory: more and more clinical recording techniques, and super-close attention to detail. Beck's earlier works are defiantly ramshackle and I think even if he makes a "party" album it will be the coolest, cleanest machine he can invent.

The problem with this album is that John Grant's Pale Green Ghosts exists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvM3D4XE9qM&feature=kp

somebody should ask him if some of that Morning Phase money will go to fund scientology's department of attack and general harassment . didn't listen, too bad for me.

the strings on "wave" sort of sound like homogenic-era björk imo

I heard a review of this album on NPR but thought it was a look back at 'Dark Side of the Moon'.

I like this more now that I can listen to the whole thing. Phase->Turn Away does it for me.

not heard sea change since it came out really but i like this more than i remember being into that album. the melodies seem less 'monotone'. or maybe its just that theres a lushness to how hes produced his vocals on this that does it for me (beck seems to sing 'better' these days). was expecting it to be really lame and transparently trying to court a specific audience but its a bit better than that.

its odd, even those other non album tracks like i wont be long, they all have a similar sheen to them. its the sound of nice, lush digital production, but not that expensive, its low-ish budget lushness. i wont be long is great though - chorus reminds me of i wanna be adored/stone roses, surprisingly.

none of these non album songs is all that novel or radical etc (at least not in the way his old stuff was) though, only defriended sounds like becks been listening to clams casino or some cloud rap stuff.

actually, i take that back - the extended version of gimme is pretty special. reminds me a little of mid-80s/parade-era prince.

I'm not really feeling this but then again "Midnite Vultures" was the last Beck album I was into.

actually, i take that back - the extended version of gimme is pretty special. reminds me a little of mid-80s/parade-era prince.

― StillAdvance, Wednesday, February 26, 2014 11:20 PM (Yesterday)

The extended versions of all of them are pretty great, IMO, but yeah, "Gimme" went from being not much of anything in its normal release, to something really special and unexpected in the 24-minute version.

What did you think of "NYC 73-78"?

woah "gimme" is great- where is this extended version?

This album seems to be what is known as 'polarising'.

This album is what some call "boring."

Luxuriously boring though. This is high-end, hand-woven, artisan tedium.

Gimme Extended version here maybe

http://plixid.com/2013/09/25/beck-gimme-single-2013-mp3/

the beck that I wish would return:

http://www.spin.com/sites/all/files/styles/style620_413/public/130730-Best-Lollapalooza-Beck.jpg