Beck’s voice, most often doubled and sometimes tripled, omnipresent and in conversation with itself, binds and elevates this, his most consistently exceptional album since Odelay.
Though it’s ridiculous to rank an album within an artist’s body of work on the day of its release ... I’m going to go ahead and do exactly that and place Morning Phase on Beck’s top shelf, alongside Odelay! and Sea Change.
Whether his melancholy morning is a phase or part of a larger cycle to which he may return in the future (the latter is more likely), Beck proves once again here that he’s a tremendously versatile artist, capable of excelling throughout the musical spectrum.
This is the most refreshed Beck has sounded in a decade; it's his best album in that much time, easily, and sure to be instantly beloved by fans who hold Sea Change to be his crowning work.
Like Sea Change and Mutations before it, this LP’s songs are simple enough, but the arrangements are not, full of orchestral swells and studio tricks that recall Nigel Godrich long after his collaboration with Beck has ended.
It’s not as good as Sea Change, but that it’s anywhere close—and it is—means it’s doing something right.
Morning Phase is an often gorgeous sequel to Sea Change, but it’s also more than that: it’s cheering proof that Beck isn’t ready to start repeating himself just yet.
Deceptively simple, Morning Phase rewards repeated immersion.
‘Morning Phase’ is a return to the lovelorn introspection of 2002’s ‘Sea Change’ – in style, if not substance.
While the earlier LP was harrowing in its soul-searching melancholia, Morning Phase is warm and soothing, its tone coming across as beautifully bittersweet rather than overtly depressing.
Here on Morning Phase though, it seems there’s something more reflective going on, something older, wiser and a bit more philosophical.
It couples a moody sort of glamour with a concrete feeling of loneliness, and it makes for some of the most affecting comedown folk you’re likely to hear all year.
This is Beck the Echo Park hoodrat shrugging aside the multicultural L.A. Basin he once supposedly exemplified in favor of the toked-out vibrations of 1970s Malibu, Topanga Canyon, and Point Mugu.
Morning Phase is that comeback story, that emergence from the water and that first breath taken with the gusto of someone knowing they are truly alive. It is a beautiful record, and maybe a little over-simplified at its weakest moments, straddling that line between clean and bare.
The Beck we find in Morning Phase depicts a weary soul resting in a hammock as he explores his transcendental spiritual existence, rather than the sprightly blue-eyed cockatoo that was starting to find his groove again after an almost-defeating spinal injury.
Morning Phase is a terrific mood piece and a worthy follow-up, even if in spirit only, to Sea Change; it lacks the gripping unease of that album, but replaces it capably with genuine warmth and a sunnier outlook.
That there’s nothing particularly ‘new’ about ‘Morning Phase’ is by no means a fault: this is acoustic Beck, and it’s acoustic Beck at his most sublime.
Given that Morning Phase reveals similarly raw honesty and engrossing emotion – plus bears the mark of superior penmanship gained by a decade’s more patience and wisdom, the album is poised to be revered as one of Beck’s most potent collections.
Personally, we’ve never been persuaded of Beck’s merits as a straight-up singer-songwriter — his voice is too thin and reedy, his lyrics too ordinary when shorn of the self-conscious Dadaist jive — but give a fella his due, he knows his way round a melody
Cumulatively Morning Phase can feel too consistent in mood and pace.
Morning Phase may not be the most forward-thinking entry in Beck’s chamelionic canon, and its attempts to live up to the bare-bones stylings of his last “folk” album fall somewhat short.
Sonically, it’s practically Sea Change Part II. Musical choices are almost identical—bells, swelling cinematic strings, ample harmonies—but Hansen’s voice doesn’t sound quite so sad.
Beck has swapped sorrow for mere melancholy, a shift in attitude that makes this 2014 album sweeter than its predecessor, a distinction sometimes distinguished by moments where words, traditionally the sadness signifiers for sensitive troubadours, are washed away by cascading waves of candy-colored sound.
While he's apparently working on another genre-jumping LP, his new album, Morning Phase, is not that record. Instead of a much-needed daring comeback statement, it's more like a pointed exhale. It feels safe.
At the end of things, Morning Phase remains exceedingly lovely but disappointedly insubstantial; not a sea change at all, but just another passing phase in a career that’s made a specialty of them.
Beck's return to the personnel and feel of 2002's Sea Change makes for a deeply contemplative listen.
Morning Phase may not be the out-and-out masterpiece that everyone says it is, but anytime we are blessed with a very-good Beck album, the world is all the richer because of it.
Morning Phase proves more instrumentally lush than Sea Change, but far less emotive in its songwriting. If you like to sleepwalk through the early hours of the day, Morning Phase is a pleasant enough sedative—but there’s little here for the cup of coffee or invigorating jog sort.
While the more slow, syrupy side of Beck's discography appeals to many, it never has to me. Morning Phase shows beck returning to the stomping grounds of albums like Mutations and Sea Change, but with instrumentation and tunes that are far more uninteresting.
Largely unimaginative arrangements, flat delivery, a surfeit of vague ecological metaphors that wash like spray on the rocks (you can have that one for free, Mr. Hansen), and a lack of any sense of connection, of need, of reality.
How is this the same dude that made devils haircut?
Favorite Tracks - Country Down
Least Fav - ... like everything else
On Morning Phase, we see an unusually soft and sweet batch of material from Beck. Aside from Sea Change, this is really the only other melancholy album in Beck's discography. He's a rocker, that's for sure, and when he drops something light as a feather, it comes as a pleasant surprise. Instead of resorting to his usual guitar/drum-heavy instrumentals, he lets his songwriter side take the spotlight, along with his passionate vocal performances. The result is one heck of a style transition, but ... read more
Morning Phase is pretty clearly billed as a follow-up to Sea Change from over a decade before, and the album doesn't hide Beck going back in that direction. Given just how essential that record is, both for Beck and just in general, this certainly shouldn't be something that his fans would be cold towards. This is also only the second time ever Beck had stepped back from his eclectic showmanship and experimental stylings to instead venture into a more subdued, yet still sublime, sounding ... read more
"Morning Phase" is the twelfth studio album by American musician Beck, released in February 2014. The album is often considered a companion piece to Beck's 2002 album "Sea Change" due to its similar sound and thematic elements. "Morning Phase" marks a return to the lush, melancholic folk-rock sound that characterized "Sea Change," featuring introspective lyrics and intricate arrangements.
One of the standout tracks from "Morning Phase" is ... read more
Morning Phase basically feels like Sea Change 2 but with less interesting production and a tracklist that could have been shortened. It is still however Sea Change 2 so that means I still enjoyed this a LOT.
1 | Cycle 0:39 | 79 |
2 | Morning 5:19 | 80 |
3 | Heart Is a Drum 4:31 | 86 |
4 | Say Goodbye 3:29 | 80 |
5 | Blue Moon 4:02 | 87 |
6 | Unforgiven 4:34 | 80 |
7 | Wave 3:40 | 76 |
8 | Don't Let It Go 3:09 | 76 |
9 | Blackbird Chain 4:26 | 77 |
10 | Phase 1:07 | 76 |
11 | Turn Away 3:05 | 82 |
12 | Country Down 4:00 | 81 |
13 | Waking Light 5:00 | 85 |
#1 | / | Esquire (US) |
#1 | / | MOJO |
#2 | / | Time Out New York |
#5 | / | Diffuser |
#5 | / | Q Magazine |
#7 | / | musicOMH |
#7 | / | Paste |
#8 | / | Entertainment Weekly |
#8 | / | No Ripcord |
#8 | / | The Guardian |