BECK
Produced by Beck
Released February 25, 2014
"You need to build an ability to just be yourself and not be doing something. That's what the phones are taking away, is the ability to just sit there. That's being a person. Because underneath everything in your life there is that thing, that empty—forever empty. That knowledge that it's all for nothing and that you're alone. It's down there...And sometimes when things clear away, you're not watching anything, you're in your car, and you start going, 'oh no, here it comes. That I'm alone.' It's starts to visit on you. Just this sadness. Life is tremendously sad, just by being in it...Just be sad. Just let the sadness, stand in the way of it, and let it hit you like a truck...And I let it come, and I just started to feel 'oh my God,'and I pulled over and I just cried like a bitch. I cried so much. And it was beautiful. Sadness is poetic. You're lucky to live sad moments. And then I had happy feelings. Because when you let yourself feel sad, your body has antibodies, it has happiness that comes rushing in to meet the sadness. So I was grateful to feel sad, and then I met it with true, profound happiness. It was such a trip."
-Louis CK
I love that collection of quotes from comedian Louis CK, as he recounted on Conan O'Brien's late night talk show as I truly believe he hit upon a profound societal truth pertaining to our collective experience in the 21st century. We are a society that seems to be incapable of living without some sense of distraction, some signals or signs that are always jockeying for our attention and in a lot of cases, some signals or signs that are ultimately self-validating. We are a busier society than ever as 24 hours truly do not seem to be enough to accomplish all that we need to, let alone provide us with the time to achieve what we wish to. We are pulled in every conceivable direction by all manner of people and tasks and I honestly cannot tell you how many times that I have heard from others, as well as uttering the same sentiments to myself, about how we all wish that we could be detached from it all, to find some sense of aloneness, some solitude, some space away from the persistent noise of life long enough to re-group, recharge and perhaps to even give us the energy to re-connect to the world. But as Louis CK also brilliantly explains, are we a society that is truly willing to allow ourselves to have that aloneness for what emotions would that time without distractions unearth and could we handle them once they arrived?
On an early Saturday morning, immediately after a week long blast of wild winter weather including ice storms, rain, and even periods of thunder snow, plus copious amounts of shoveling, re-shoveling and re-shoveling plus all of the daily responsibilities of life which all seemed to pile up skywards due to all of that aforementioned wild, winter weather, I was driving around my fair city performing some minor errands when I slid "Morning Phase," the latest album from Beck, his first release in almost six years, into the CD player. Little did I know what I was in for...
By now, I am certain that you have all heard or read that Beck's "Morning Phase" is a supremely warm, welcoming, beguiling, airy experience, an assessment to which I wholeheartedly agree. But I also do believe that it is an album of quiet melancholy, where emotional turbulence underpins the sonic peacefulness. It is as if Beck has figured out how to transform the likes of Buffalo Springfield's elegant track "Expecting To Fly" from the "Buffalo Springfield Again" album (released October 30, 1967), into a sophisticated song cycle that is completely enveloping from the album's first few seconds, which arrives in a near wall of mournful strings, orchestrated by Beck's Father, David Campbell.
As the opening string laden intro entitled "Cycle" segues into the beautiful "Morning," I was instantly disarmed emotionally and quickly discovered that this new album is really not one designed to be listened to in the company of others. It is an album designed to be an intimate conversation between yourself and the music. It is an album designed to be listened to and fully experienced without distractions, without computers or televisions or any devices that begin with the letter "I," without any bleeps or blips or flashing lights from your Smartphones or any voices in your ears other than the sound of Beck's, who supplies his strongest singing to date with this release as his lead vocals are enveloped by his gorgeously multi-tracked harmony vocals which "ooh" and "aaah" into the ether as if they exist as an existential sigh.
Much has also been written about how "Morning Phase" functions as a quasi-sequel to Beck's wrenching masterpiece "Sea Change" (released September 24, 2002) and with that assessment, I also wholeheartedly agree. I remember when I first heard that album how I was instantly struck, to a sobering degree, by the unabashed sincerity of the album as well as the unquestionable heartbreak that inspired it. Unlike the albums previous to it, "Sea Change" really did not contain Beck's trademark and near hallucinogenic sonic flash or head spinning lyrical puzzles. It was an album of pure unadulterated emotion that connected so powerfully that I began to wonder why Beck just didn't make every album like that one. But if he had, then we wouldn't have received "Guero" (released March 29, 2005), "The Information" (released October 3, 2006), and "Modern Guilt" (released July 8, 2008), all terrific albums that have expanded Beck's musical palate wondrously.
On "Morning Phase," we return to the same sonic landscape as "Sea Change" as the hallucinogenic sonic flash has been considerably dialed down as any hints of psychedelic touches are gentle, muted and subtle. Additionally, there are also no head spinning lyrical puzzles to speak of. It is an album, once again, of that sincere and pure unadulterated emotion. As with several of his past releases, Beck, in addition to his own multi-instrumentalist skills, is again working with his core team of musical compatriots, including guitarist Smokey Hormel, drummer Joey Waronker, bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen, the great keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr. and guitarist Jason Falkner (a great artist in his own right) and this time, has even added the legendary bassist Stanley Clarke into the mix. And again, like "Sea Change," the album's secret weapon arrives in the form of Beck's own Father, David Campbell. Where Campbell's stunning string arrangements on "Sea Change" seemed to emulate the type of turbulent orchestral backdrops we heard on Elton John's "Madman Across The Water" (released November 5, 1971). For "Morning Phase," the mournful strings seemed to remind me of elements of what Jon Brion achieved with his nearly emotionally paralyzing film score to Paul Thomas Anderson's "Magnolia" (1999), as the orchestra makes your heart stop on the proverbial dime every time they appear throughout the album.
On a more conceptual level is where the two albums separate. Where "Sea Change" found itself in the maelstrom of emotional turmoil brought on by the devastating end of a long term relationship, "Morning Phase" finds itself long in its aftermath, perhaps even long past more emotional upheavals or even after the passing of a long, dark night. Here is where I think Beck's album can even serve as the unofficial third section of an unofficial music trilogy with Broken Bells' "After The Disco" (released January 31, 2014) serving as the first part with music to serve as the soundtrack of sad lonely nights walking home alone, and The Flaming Lips' "The Terror" (released April 1, 2013) serving as the second installment, the crippling dark night of the soul. "Morning Phase" represents a new day's dawning, where the pain is still present but maybe less sharp and the hurts are slowly fading as the sun rises. While all three albums have seemed to pinpoint a certain 21st century malaise, and even Beck himself sings "I'm so tired of being alone" at the opening of the selection "Blue Moon," "Morning Phase" is certainly the most hopeful of the three, as it slowly finds the inexplicable solitude necessary to provide a state of inner healing and motivation to forge ahead.
"Woke up this morning/From a long night in the storm," Beck begins in the album's first lyrical tack "Morning." "Looked up this morning./Saw the roses full of thorns/Mountains are falling/They don't have nowhere to go/The ocean's a diamond/That only shines when you're alone." Those opening lines, sung over a slow motion beat and an acoustic guitar that sounds as if it was lifted from the back of Neil Young's pickup truck circa 1971, sets the stage for the entire album, which functions as a near continuous acoustic/symphonic piece that just happens to be divided up into songs. Perhaps as meditations presented to himself as well as to all of us listening, Beck captures, in one track after another, an emotional fragility the listener does not have to provide any work on their own to discover. These are not songs that you have to learn or get to know in order to enjoy their luxuriousness and emotional palate. "Morning Phase" is an album of directness, making for music that instantaneously meets you right where you are beautifully and effortlessly.
The album continues with the cool summer morning breeze of "Heart Is A Drum," as Beck attempts to finds ways to release himself from the pains of life as a necessity to keep moving forwards himself as life and time stops for no one. Like the album's music itself, Beck sings, "I need to find someone to show me how to play it slow/And just let it go." And let it go he does on "Say Goodbye" ("Sort it out and let it burn/Empty out and empty drawer/In my pockets there's nothing more") and "Unforgiven" as Beck finds himself driving far away "into the afterglow," the very unknown place where the music, and the downbeats in particular, phase themselves into.
The tone poem "Wave" is the album's stunning and voluminous centerpiece as it contains nothing more than Beck's voice surrounded by an increasing surge of David Campbell's strings signifying the point when being alone and facing down the beast of sadness becomes a flood of emotion at its most overwhelming. "Isolation," Beck intones and repeats several times as the strings swirl, surround and eventually sweep Beck, and all of us away.
From this point, "Morning Phase" seems to find Beck attempting to find his way back from the sadness, the despair hoping to reconnect again in tracks like "Don't Let It Go," the sublime "Blackbird Chain" ("I'll never, never, never, never, never, never refuse you."), the atmospheric "Turn Away" ("The wall that love divides/Between waking and slumber/Turn away") and the country and western influenced "Country Down."
The gorgeously elegiac "Waking Light" closes the album on a triumphant note as the winding chords and ascending musical patterns feel to to mirror that of the sight and feelings experienced when observing a full sunrise and the sense of possibility that arrives with the start of a new day. The night has been long and arduous but life goes on and in the case of this album, so does Beck ...and so shall we as well.
"Morning Phase" is as it sounds, an album for the morning, and decidedly not the afternoon or night, as it is meant for the period in which are minds are not as clouded or cluttered with the noise of life. In fact, "Morning Phase" is designed to help all of us take some time away from the noise of life as it is an album that represents the sound of rejuvenation, rebirth and reawakening, a process I believe that we all tend to experience while in the throes of solitude. But what I feel that we can all experience together regarding this work is the celebration of an artist like Beck and the collective blessings we have knowing that an artist of his talent, skill and empathy is here among us at this very point in our collective existence, writing songs and sharing them with us.
Whatever emotions you experience while listening to this album, I urge you to confront them fully and to just allow them and your full selves to just...be. To be in the moment, the sadness, the release, and the reconstruction.
And let Beck's miraculous album provide you with the soundtrack.
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