There’s a persistence sense of longing in Beck’s work, a continuously prolonged desire to express deep-slipped feelings of melancholy and nostalgia, aided through thoughtful reflection and once shortsighted recollections. The artist bottles these tender reactions through his latest, Grammy-nominated album Morning Phase, and it’s apparent throughout that there’s more here than what’s dispelled on the surface.
Through contemplative tracks like “Morning,” “Blue Moon,” and “Phase,” Beck produces an album prided on laces of sorrow and progression and disquieting wallows of heart and manifestation. It’s far less abrasive and catchy as Beck’s past — and, ultimately, better — CDs like Guero and Sea Change, the latter being the spiritual predecessor to Morning Phase. But it’s hard to reject how committed Beck is here in portraying the swimming meditations on heartache, contempt, fondness and deliberate retractions of bad past actions, just to name a few of course, into the listener’s ears.
This gives Morning Phase its unusual linger. Its tracks, were they in the hands of the wrong artist, would likely become trite and cliché, but Beck makes them wholly his own while still experimenting with what he wants to create. Singles like “Turn Away” — which many will recognize as the lead marketing tune for Wild’s promotions this past fall — and especially “Don’t Let It Go” demonstrates this perfectly. What may seem like mere self-pity on the page blooms into a well-balanced personification of conditioned unease or remembrance.
It fuses what makes Beck’s past songs so lovable, but also gives this album — the artist’s 12th — a maturity and poetic ambiance the 44-year-old musician never quite tried to obtain after Sea Change or, some may argue, Modern Guilt. Morning Phase is intentionally mild-mannered by design, which will likely make some, including myself, initially brush it off as being slight compared to Beck’s previous creations. But, again, that’s what makes this album so unshakeable.
It’s an album that almost demands you recognize its concentration for control and somberness. At the same time, however, it plays itself wonderfully as background melodies, the kind which will live on to be played over and over again in new-age coffee shops across middle America. Beck, even in middle age, has a spunk inside him that probably won’t, and shouldn’t, die. He always wants to push himself towards making something different than his past works, but also knows how to continue sprinkling his trademark quirks into each passionate song.
Morning Phase will not be the album Beck is remembered for, but when it comes to remembering his range and introspection, it’s certainly one fans should return to.
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