It’s been a while since we last heard from Beck Hansen. Not since 2008 if you’re only counting full album releases, although his is a name that sporadically pops up on singles here and there. Oh, and there was the Song Reader project in 2012, consisting entirely of sheet music. Yeah, you can always trust this guy to follow his own muse and to think outside the constricting box of popular music. Fair to say Morning Phase is one of the year’s most anticipated albums.

Morning Phase has been promoted as a kind of companion piece to 2002’s Sea Change, which is one of three absolute landmark albums in Beck’s career (along with Odelay (1996) and Mutations (1998)), so no pressure, right? Sea Change was a typically new direction for Beck, he always seems to have something new up his sleeve and is never afraid to experiment, but it was unique in its complete conceptual vision. Whereas an album like Odelay was all about throwing these eclectic and contrasting ideas together on a record, Sea Change was from the first track to the last, a singer-songwriter album. Sparse, dark and bracingly confessional. It was written in the midst of a messy breakup, but this new album was written in a time of seemingly blissful domesticity (He’s been married to actress Marissa Ribisi since 2004 and the pair have 2 children). Sounds like a strange place to then revisit, doesn’t it? But it isn’t.

Morning Phase begins with the 40 second ‘Cycle’, a short, brooding orchestral preface that sets the scene for the sea of strings to follow, before fading elegantly into the acoustic guitar chords of ‘Morning’. Suddenly the Sea Change comparisons are clear. Casually strummed minor chords, perched before an unobtrusive string arrangement, as Beck croons above it all. But where that album was melancholic, this one is hopeful. It’s still smoothly mellow, only here we’re given imagery of sun rays and new mornings. Sea Change was the troubled night and Morning Phase is the fresh new morning.

‘Heart is a Drum’ picks up the tempo, while keeping the same atmospheric production (Beck produced it himself), making that age old musical analogy between the beat of a drum and the beat of a heart (though not his own heart…). Then ‘Say Goodbye’ is a bit of a meta ode to the breakup song (“these are the words we use to say goodbye”). Both ease into themselves over plucky acoustic guitar intros.

Then we have the masterpiece of this set. ‘Blue Moon’ borrows (but doesn’t sample) from the old country standard, and is just goddamn beautiful. “Cut me down to size so that I can fit inside/The lies that will divide us both in time”. Have I mentioned how good the lyrics are? Beck has always had a way with words, be it the nonsensical slacker rap of Loser or his more confessional, singer song writer stuff, and he’s lost nothing in his public absence. With the distinct conceptual sound of the record, you don’t notice it at first, but on repeated listens the words manage to crawl to the forefront. Nothing ever seems forced, the vocals just float where they should. It’s laid back and comfortable, even when tackling uncomfortable subject matter.

Track 6, ‘Unforgiven’, is a sinner’s escape. A promise between two broken souls to reunite beyond the darkness. “Somewhere unforgiven/I will wait for you”. ‘Wave’ meanwhile is heavy on the strings, and an emotionally powerful tale of surrender, building to the final refrain of “Isolation/Isolation/Isolation”. It’s beautiful too, though dark and submissive. Compare that to the lighter, more hopeful proceeding track ‘Don’t Let it Go’, where the guitar gets down right James Taylor-y. There’s a distinct influence here of that Californian soft-rocky, early 70s sorta scene. Very Neil Young in places, very Crosby Stills & Nash in others. I’d argue that it touches on that hallowed ground that Gram Parsons once called Cosmic American Music. ‘Blackbird Chain’ brings back the pedal steel guitar (Gram would approve) and even enlists an organ. It’s one of the more densely instrumental (excluding the orchestral tunes) tracks on the album. Beck plays a bunch of those instruments himself, as he often does. He’s credited across the 13 tunes for vocals, acoustic & electric guitar, keyboards, piano, tambourine, ukulele, charango, celeste, dulcimer, harmonica, synthesizers, glockenspiel and organ. I’d never even heard of a charango before. A multi-talented bloke indeed.

‘Phase’, completes the other half of the title track duties. It’s a short, stringy instrumental. ‘Turn Away’ is a Simon and Garfunlkle-y wall of sounds carried forward by a chugging acoustic guitar, and is one of the sweetest moments here. ‘Country Down’ lives up to its titular genre in instrumentation, but not in sound. In fact it kinda sounds like something Elton John mighta sung in his glory days. It’s a song of settling down, and a lovely one at that. “Oh country down/where I found my proving ground”. That song then gives way to the closer ‘Waking Light’, one of only two songs to top the 5 minute mark (‘Morning’ is the other). It’s a great closer too, vast and triumphant. “When the morning comes to meet you/Fill your eyes with waking light”. It’s that morning as redemption idea again. It also has the only electric guitar solo you’ll hear on this album, as one of the final touches on a settled groove that brings this record to an end.

Morning Phase is an atmospheric album and it’s an album that never feels rushed. It also has a really great cover, which seems to paint Beck as the hippy Kurt Cobain – not that bad a comparison here, really. The sorrow of Sea Change remains, only now there’s the sun emerging from behind the dark clouds. Rise and meet the new day. This is a great artist at a point where he has nothing to prove – though Beck’s not a guy to get complacent. This is his best album since Sea Change at least. In fact it may just be better. Sea Change never seemed quite as authentic as it tried to be, probably just because of the worn stereotype it played to of the tortured break up album by the heartbroken songwriter. Nobody’s ever gonna do that better than Blood on the Tracks. Morning Phase has an added depth to it, that of the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s the full story of the resilience of humanity. To quote that aforementioned breakup album, “They say the darkest hour is right before the dawn”. Beck is back, baby. Let’s hope it’s not another 6 years before we hear from him again.

Tracklisting:

1. Cycle

2. Morning

3. Heart is a Drum

4. Say Goodbye

5. Blue Moon

6. Unforgiven

7. Wave

8. Don't Let it Go

9. Blackbird Chain

10. Phase

11. Turn Away