Beck Hansen's Instant Classic - Morning Phase

Who would have thought that the one-name guy who gave us the jokey, brainworm "Loser" in 1994  or a couple of years later, the paen to hipsterism "Where It's At" ("two turntables and a microphone"), would twenty years later produce a reflective, hypnotic adult pop album for the ages?

Morning Phase is the name of this surprise from Beck. It is -- without hyperbole -- a masterpiece of the kind that come along once in a decade or so.  Texturally unified (and beautifully so), it sets the kind of spellbinding mood that was conjured by Roxy Music's Avalon, Mitchell's Heijera, U2's Joshua Tree or Wilco's Sky Blue Sky without sounding like any of them.  Pink Moon, anyone?

In a world full of hard, angular hip-hop, this is beautiful music.  Slowed down, full of string washes with occasional bluegrass-y fills, Morning Phase is music about the start of something -- a new day, adulthood, life after a dark time.  Like all such beginnings, it's not clear what will follow and there is a tone of apprehension and dread to some of these songs.  But the musical mood it sets is one of relief:  "thank God that's over."

Listen to "Blue Moon" and "Say Goodbye," two tracks that show the range of the album:

Morning Phase is the kind of work has made me keep faith with pop music and its endless ability to surprise and satisfy.