The Swimming Hour Cover Art Beck Guero Album Art
With his twelfth album Morning time Phase hailed as a render to class, Brook Hansen talks to Joseph Stannard well-nigh loss, internalised expression and the awkward art of songwriting
Beck's twelfth album Morning Stage beamed into my life at a moment of traumatic flux. Its first unmarried, the achingly bereft 'Blue Moon', was fabricated available as an audio stream on January 20th, the mean solar day my human relationship of vi years arrived at its mutually agreed - just still devastating - determination. Striking me at what we might term a (coughing) vulnerable time, the song demolished in iv minutes the wall of deprival I'd been edifice for months. When I heard the full album a few days later its troubled migrate seemed to mirror the uncertainty and confusion of the new state of affairs I establish myself in. I've since discovered it'south only the thing to pause the deafening silence of 2am.
The album has been widely touted as a belated companion slice to Beck's 2002 masterpiece Sea Change - a collection of songs inspired past the collapse of his relationship with fiancee Leigh Limon. Back then I was firmly ensconced in the protective arms of a relatively new and stable human relationship, which made the anthology a luxury holiday in someone else's misery rather than an opportunity for tear-soaked catharsis. Morning Stage, on the other paw, forged an instant and inextricable connexion to the here and at present. These songs speak to the weight of accumulated history, the phantom-limb pang of futures destined never to materialise and the embattled hope that the goodness in the states can withstand wave after wave of greater and lesser misfortune; that we add upwards to more than than the sum of our suffering.
But if the impetus for Sea Alter was unmistakable - and widely publicised - the source of Morning Phase's melancholy isn't quite as easily determined. Though 'Blue Moon' can exist interpreted as a lovelorn cri de cœur, the album's lyrical orientation tends toward the allusive and not-specific. The 2008 spinal injury which knocked Beck out of full service for a couple of years might account for the blue mood. Just then again, it might non. We're given images of ocean and dominicus, hazy ruminations on loneliness and loss. The title itself seems to gesture homophonically at a kind of morbid hypnagogia. Poring over the lyric sheet offers scant illumination, but and then that's been the case with Beck since his 1993 debut Gold Feelings. I retrieve listening to 'Orphans', the opening song of 2008's Modernistic Guilt, and being intrigued by lines like "As we cross ten leagues from a rubicon / The matchsticks for my bones / If we can learn how to freeze ourselves alive / Nosotros tin learn to leave these burdens to fire" only to be startled by how awkwardly they scanned when divorced from Beck's subdued murmur and the off-kilter blast 'n' clunk of Danger Mouse's product. Glance at the lyrics to 'Loser', 'Devil's Haircut', 'Nicotine And Gravy', 'Sun Sun', and the aforementioned applies. It's non that Beck is a poor lyricist; more that even at his most plainly confessional, his words belong where they are, embedded within compositions that are designed not to be dissected but to exist felt and inhabited.
Morn Phase reunites the ensemble Beck worked with for Sea Change. This band includes ii popular geniuses in their own correct - ex-Jellyfish members Jason Falkner and Roger Joseph Manning Jr - and may well be the 21st century'due south respond to 1960s America'due south legendary session troupe The Wrecking Crew. Beck's begetter David Campbell again makes his presence felt through a series of striking cord arrangements - his orchestration for 'Wave' is as every bit immersive equally its title and lyric need. And this chilling meditation serves as an indication of how far Beck'south writing has evolved: 'Circular The Curve', its equivalent on the 2002 album, is stunning, but arguably too indebted to Nick Drake's 'River Man' to be fully embraced on its own claim; 'Wave' doesn't audio like anyone else. Information technology's also the album's near challenging 2am listen. Those who've heard it will sympathise what I mean.
The critical consensus so far seems to exist that Forenoon Phase is Beck's finest for at least a decade. Maybe that'south the case, merely I wonder whether those expressing this opinion have been paying attention. For Guero (2005), The Data (2006) and Modern Guilt (2008) Beck returned to a beat-driven approach, which elicited inevitable comparisons to the Grammy Honour winning Odelay (1997). But this fabric was considerably more than emotionally and sonically complex. Songs similar 'Girl', 'Missing' and 'Chemtrails' exude a vaporous disquiet, while several tracks on the Nigel Godrich-produced The Information - notably 'Cellphone's Expressionless', 'Soldier Jane' and 'The Horrible Fanfare/Landslide/Exoskeleton' (the latter a 10-minute suite with spoken interjections from Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze, which ranks equally one of Brook's virtually ambitious and bewilderingly overlooked compositions) - open up into vast dubscapes, evacuated cities of sound through which our protagonist wanders similar a paranoid stickman. Likewise, his recent non-album single 'Defriended' is built around a robust machine rhythm, but it'south as well disconnected and spectral to plant a club banger even equally a fourteen-minute remix.
'Blue Moon'
In any case, Morning Phase is more than a return to form. It's a slow, reflective album with a complex emotional undertow; information technology's a production masterpiece; it's a stone to break open your center; it'due south a reminder that happiness is fleeting, simply so is sadness and and so, indeed, is life. Like St Vincent'due south self-titled quaternary album and Neil Finn's Dizzy Heights, it makes a strong example for the idea that we're non quite finished with songs. Or rather, that songs will come looking for usa whether we like it or not.
A week after my first full heed to Morning Phase, I'm connected to Brook via phone line to Los Angeles. He's en route to the studio; non untalkative, only somewhat guarded. I'm uncertain whether the extended pauses that greet my questions indicate a time filibuster or his exasperation. He warms noticeably when our conversation moves towards subjects other than the procedure of making the new anthology. Are there whatsoever questions he'due south ill of existence asked? "If anything," he replies, "I'm sick of my answers."
The material on Morning Phase has taken a while to come out. Tin can you give a brief history of the anthology?
Beck Hansen: Basically I went in to brand the record about a year ago, but some of the songs were pre-existing. The idea for the tape has been around for a long fourth dimension. Morning Phase was something that I could've worked on and put out, but I felt that because of the long gap [after Modern Guilt] I wanted to put out something that had a little chip more of a musical range, with some songs that would be better for live performance. But for different reasons the other project that I was working on didn't come off, it wasn't the correct fourth dimension. And then I picked this record support. After having tried to do it in Nashville in 2011… information technology was something I was working on, off and on, for several years, but so I finally kind of simply got downward to information technology at the start of terminal year. It's been waiting in the wings.
At what point did information technology became apparent that this was a companion piece to Sea Change?
BH: I really wasn't telling myself that. Information technology was more about doing a kind of tape with songs based on acoustic guitar, piano... quieter, slower, as opposed to Modernistic Guilt, which was a collaboration with Danger Mouse, and the previous album [The Information] which had all these breakbeats that we'd created - we cutting all the tracks alive, and so remixed the whole thing, y'know? Those are completely unlike projects, there's a different orientation to those records. I experience like because there are different kinds of records that I make, that Morning Stage ends up being a bookend by default, considering there'southward another five albums in between that are in a similar vein [to each other]. If I were allowed to brand more than records, I recall, creatively, I would take more records like Morning time Stage.
You lot lost a potential follow-upwardly to Bounding main Change, didn't you?
BH: Yeah. I had a bunch of songs that I'd written over a two-twelvemonth period after the Sea Change songs, which I felt were gonna be the adjacent tape in that vein. Then when I was on tour, the tapes were in a suitcase that was left behind at a venue. When we went to expect for them, they had been taken. I think that partially had something to practice with not making another record in the vein of Ocean Alter, considering that was really heartbreaking to me. I was really proud of those songs, and I felt like they were edifice on the shoulders of Sea Change. I thought the songs were a lot better. It was a real step upwardly. Unfortunately I hadn't memorised most of those songs. I'd recorded them on tapes as a reference, and I had them on tour with me so that I could work on them. Just they were gone. It was sort of a shock that yous could take a whole body of piece of work and then the side by side mean solar day, completely gone. So I think for several years I was just a little scrap frustrated and didn't want to take annihilation to do with writing a song on an acoustic guitar. [laughs] I ended up making another record with the Dust Brothers [Guero] considering we had a lot of unfinished fabric. Then I did another tape with Nigel [The Data] where we did the contrary of Body of water Change. He wanted to do a kind of beat-driven hip hop record.
Godrich has since started the electronically-orientated Ultraista (with frequent Beck collaborator Joey Waronker) only The Information must have been quite a departure for him at the fourth dimension?
BH: I think that was a real laboratory, and a bit of schoolhouse, those sessions. Because I had been working with songs that had beats and that sort of product for years, but doing it with him, y'know, we were starting from scratch. There were no samples or programming, it was just all live. Then I think for him, it was like beat school. It was kind of an experiment. It felt similar we were 16 year olds let loose, it had that kind of energy to it. A lot of discovery. It's a little crude around the edges, which was how we approached it, wanting to brand it not so polished. Something y'all would make when you lot're just withal trying to figure it all out. Because as time goes on, y'all larn how to do certain things properly, and I think with the nature of the songs nosotros were trying to do, the product needed to be a little bit raw for it take that kind of energy.
In contrast to The Information, Morning Phase is an exceedingly lush and 'produced' album. Do you think this quality, along with the recurrent images of sun and sea, derives from a uniquely Californian outlook?
BH: I'thousand so bad at that. I'm non sure what a Californian outlook is. Because I grew upward in California, but in Eastward LA. I never saw the body of water. All nosotros saw was smog and urban blight! The palm trees had rats the size of cats, the public transportation - information technology could take two to iii hours to get from 1 side of the boondocks to the other. I but partially relate to that view of California. But y'know, I spent a number of years living in the land and in the mountains, in the elements, so I remember some of that came through in the songs on this tape. Maybe some of the other fabric that I've worked on over the concluding five years, just particularly this tape.
'Moving ridge'
Body of water Change was written in response to a very specific state of affairs. I get the impression the Morning Stage songs are more than like internal dialogues. Would yous say that was accurate?
BH: Yep, I think then. I call up they're… y'know, information technology's hard to say what they are exactly, considering that'south the nature of writing songs. I can accept an thought of something I want to put into a song, but it'south sort of like handling air. You tin't really tell the air where to go, and what shape to be. And that'southward what it feels similar equally a songwriter. You're kind of dealing with this emotion or mood or mindstate, and you're trying to get it to exist in a song. So it's kind of an bad-mannered endeavour.
But I think with these item songs, there was a mood that hopefully the songs convey. I just tried to inhabit that, and work on the songs over and over until that item feeling started to manifest in the songs. Information technology was coming from a identify of... trying to observe something redemptive about experience and travails, and difficulties, and just full general life. Which happens, and there's this accession of life which comes and goes, and builds up. With these songs, I was trying to engage with that - how to face up that and appoint that without it sinking you. Is in that location a fashion to transmute negativity and misfortune into something [that] leads you dorsum to pushing forrad and not being completely taken downwardly?
And I'm sorry if it's kind of generalised and non-specific, simply I simply felt like the songs needed to convey that in a kind of non-specific mode. Because it would maybe feel a picayune bit, uh... overwrought, if it was speaking too specifically. I'm trying to get the kind of words and sounds that give you the feeling, rather than tell you what to call back. That'due south the fox. Just if somebody hears it and takes it as, 'Oh, these are some nice songs', that'due south fine as well, y'know?
That ties in with something I've been thinking about a lot lately. The accumulation of personal history, and the effect that has on the individual.
BH: I think in some ways it can strengthen yous. It can shape you. But information technology can likewise deform yous. I'thou sure some people just sail through life and do alright, but the rest of the states, y'know, we're grappling. We're not all equipped to know how to deal with it. And so it can be a bit of a rocky road. And sometimes there's a point where cynicism or negativity can set in as a way of dealing with these things, and the globe. Or maybe in that location'southward a way to try to accept those things and observe some other style through it. That'south really difficult. I was always curious about how some people were able to practise that. Just be unscathed. [laughs] By nature, yous want to be an empathic, feeling person, y'know? Only to exist immune to the blows of life, even what happens in the culture, and at this particular point in history… throughout history there take been those moments where y'all can't imagine how people rebuilt.
But I guess perhaps that'south an area that'southward difficult to enter into when y'all're making music or making films. Information technology's maybe not necessarily amusement, y'know? Which is what we're doing here. Just what I was trying to do with this was only get into a place and speak every bit simply as I could, every bit directly, from a personal perspective, without any kind of other stuff added to information technology. And overthinking information technology, y'know. There were points where I was unsure if what I was doing was... as well simplistic. Only I think that's how that stuff works. Getting into these emotional places and that kind of internalised expression.
With Guero, The Information and Modern Guilt, information technology seemed like the two styles you've get associated with - sample-based collage and folk-infused acoustic songwriting - were starting to meet in the middle.
BH: That was the intention. I had a long talk with Spike Jonze after Sea Change came out. He felt really strongly that I had these very singled-out approaches to music, and that I should try to do some work that brought the two together more. And then I attempted to do that on those, to lesser or greater degrees. Possibly more than so on Modern Guilt.
You lot turned forty a couple of years ago. Was that a milestone for you?
BH: I don't know… my life experience is so foreign, because… there are generally things that come to ane in life, certain, most predictable cycles; and those things that happen to everyone, because of putting out records and putting out music and other factors, have come up at unlike times for me, y'know? I've had some of these things that happen to people later on, earlier, so that kind of life cycle thing has gotten a little scrambled and dislocated. Past the fourth dimension I got to forty, I was doing things that I could chronicle to people I know in their sixties. But at the same fourth dimension there were things I felt naive well-nigh. And so it was mixed. But I don't think there was a moment of panic or annihilation.
Do you miss the time when fewer people were paying attention? When you wouldn't go instant feedback via the internet?
BH: I think most musicians in the last ten or xv years have been making a massive adjustment to that. This kind of seemingly consensus opinion that you get through the internet, through blogs, and comments and feedback from social media, all these things nowadays musicians, filmmakers, any artistic person with this kind of instant feedback that is intense, a little bit intimidating. Sometimes I recall it can warp your sense of what you're doing. And I recall that it has warped people'southward perspectives. It'southward messed with mine a bit and with other musicians I know. I've talked with friends of mine, they've had this discussion with a lot of other musicians, in that location have been these sort of growing pains to becoming accepted to that kind of feedback. And possibly a flow of time where there's been some self-consciousness. For myself, I feel like I've come up out of [that] for the most part, considering I'1000 used to it, but I would say that it was a lilliputian bit… it has taken some adjustment, and perchance I think differently about things I'm doing, question things in a way that I never would take in the 90s, when I was starting out.
Are there positive aspects to information technology?
BH: At that place's all kinds of positives. I mean, I experience similar the music business is constructed in a way where you make a record and then it comes out a twelvemonth later. The fashion that the music's being received is really off, compared to how it was xxx, forty, fifty, sixty years ago, which had a much more galvanising momentum. I don't think we've been able to have advantage of that kind of instantaneous creative flow that the cyberspace makes possible. Possibly if you're a hip hop artist putting out mixtapes a couple of times a year and you get that instantaneous street reaction, but in a lot of the other music-making worlds, it'southward still on this older model that hasn't engaged with the net.
For the Record Social club [Beck's online covers project, 'an informal meeting of various musicians to tape an album in a day'] nosotros'd record an anthology and put it upward on my website, and you could feel a kind of back and forth, simply still I retrieve there's perchance twenty-xxx,000 people checking information technology out. Which is not cipher, just it'southward not comparable to someone putting out an album. Information technology's like launching a small stone into the tide. But with the internet, it feels similar it goes into the ether, y'all're not sure who'south seeing this or if information technology's registering at all. I put up some unreleased songs on YouTube a couple of years ago and it didn't annals anywhere. I didn't meet anyone mention it at all.
Now, I have to ask: what is it with your Yanni obsession? [the Greek keyboard maestro is namechecked on Guero'due south 'Que Onda Guero' and Beck covered Live At The Acropolis as part of the Tape Club project]
BH: Oh, I wouldn't call it an obsession. With Record Social club we did practise some kind of, uh, cornerstone records, these undisputed great classics, and I liked the thought of it not existence most paying tribute to these great records… I wanted it to exist more about musicians interacting in a spontaneous way. My fascination [with Yanni] started with seeing clips of his on public telly in the 90s. He did these concerts and it was this kind of grandiose, strident performance with a large orchestra and these large banks of synthesisers… it was kind of the antithesis of everything that was happening in my area of music. Information technology was sort of the farthermost other end of things, which I find interesting.
Will there be another anthology this year?
BH: I promise so. If I tin can get to the studio in fourth dimension.
Beck'due south Morning Phase is out at present via Capitol
Source: https://thequietus.com/articles/14596-beck-interview-morning-phase
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