As few could hear Beck's 2012 album Song Reader (it was sheet music for material he hadn't recorded), this one comes as the belated follow-up to 2008's well-received Modern Guilt (although he considers Morning Phase a companion to his excellent Sea Change of 2002).
That latter album was read as
his break-up record (he and his long-time partner split) and although soaked in melancholy, it was also gorgeously presented with washes of steel guitar, synths and sometimes dramatic strings arranged by his father David Campbell.
It's at that musical, more than the lyrical level, that the often breathtakingly beautiful Morning Phase links to its predecessor.
Following a brief string intro evoking yawn-into-dawn, this eases itself awake with an acoustic strum, a warm and silver-tone guitar melody, then Beck's enchantingly delayed falsetto given widescreen treatment. It sets the tone for a prevailing mood of cloud-blown pastoralism which sometimes moves slower than a stoned sloth at Club Med.
Musical reference points here include the Moody Blues and Beach Boy Brian Wilson at their most elegantly understated (the bookends of opener Morning and closer Waking Light), airy early-70s West Coast singer-songwriters (Heart is a Drum, the acoustic Neil Young-like Say Goodbye with banjo), canyon-wide ambient-prog (the capacious Unforgiven) and close-harmony Byrds when the guitar jangle was absent (Turn Away).
