Best albums of 2014: No 8 – Morning Phase by Beck

Beck would be the first to admit that the past decade has been the most stagnant period of his life. During a strenuous 10-hour video shoot for his 2005 E-Pro single, the singer sustained a spinal injury that threatened to ruin his career. He stopped touring, struggled to write for himself (with the exception of the low-profile Modern Guilt) and channelled his creativity in the direction of others – such as on 2012’s Song Reader project, which saw famous figures from Jarvis Cocker to Jack Black interpreting his sheet music. Beck was in danger of becoming critically obsolete; but then redemption arrived with Wave – a cavernous groan of a song he penned, tried to flog to a handful of other artists and eventually decided to use for himself. With the word “isolation” as its core mantra, the song heralded the beginning of a creative rebirth for Beck, and inspired the songs that went on to form his 12th studio album.

Enlisting the same team of musicians he used on Sea Change, Morning Phase was billed as a sister to that 2002 album, which was written following the collapse of his relationship with fianceé Leigh Limon. Now married to actor Marissa Ribisi, Beck still manages to maintain the melodrama of ruined romance, almost as if he spent his debilitated years conjuring an alternative existence in which he is the star of his very own romantic comedy. “I’m so tired of being alone!” he sings on Blue Moon, while on Morning he asks: “Won’t you show me the way it used to be?”

The music’s cinematic qualities are boosted by its lush string arrangements (orchestrated by Beck’s father, who has penned a number of film scores, as well as compositions for artists such as Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones and Radiohead), with instrumentals Cycle and Phase capturing the bewildered mournfulness of heartache.

For a man heralded as one of music’s most progressive and surreal shapeshifters, there is something reassuringly simple and old-fashioned about the way this album sounds. Perhaps this is why, amid the digital dystopia of 2014, it is one of the year’s best. It’s a record that’s been laboured over and fine-tuned (in the same studios Sinatra once swaggered in) and finds Beck adopting the guise of songwriting greats – the furrowed sensitivity of Nick Drake, the wizened philosophy of Neil Young. Every song has a seductive continuity of melancholy mood. But by its end there is a sense of relief, and as its hypnotic final track, Waking Light, swells into its epic climax, you can almost envisage the credits rolling as Beck, straw in mouth, hat on head, rides off into his self-imposed sunset.

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