There was a time when made predictability seem like a defect. Across the first half of his career, the veteran contortionist could barely make it through an album without dismantling whatever identity he had established on the one before. The junkyard collage of ‘’ and ‘’ fractured into the sepia-toned melancholy of ‘’ and lurid funk of ‘’. After all that movement, submitting to ‘’ only felt natural.
That compulsion to keep scrambling formulas has noticeably receded with age. At 56, Beck is no longer possessed by the urge to mutate every few years and has instead become increasingly adept at burrowing deeper into musical language for subtler rewards.‘’ heralded a shift toward softer contours, even when ‘’ and ‘’ subsequently traded that pastoral restraint for pop gloss and synthetic sheen. While that may sound like a polite way of saying the weirdness has worn off, his latest album demonstrates why that need not be mistaken for stagnation.
His first bundle of entirely new material since 2019, ‘’ returns to the bruised heartbreak of ‘Sea Change’ and bucolic warmth of its companion piece over a decade later. That lineage is more than spiritual, since many of the musicians who helped shape those records have reconvened for this one. Although the familiarity is immediately recognisable, it never tips into outright regression.
Beck once thrived on collision; now, that excitement takes shape in a slow reveal. The chord progressions do much of the heavy lifting across these 12 cuts, propelling each with a hushed momentum without disturbing their tranquillity. The firm guitar picking on ‘In the Night’ forms the earth beneath an arrangement that sheds weight with every passing second. Beck never presses his voice against it, allowing the song to rise naturally in all its splendour.
This record is fashioned for open windows, sunshine and breeze, even while loneliness, loss and uncertainty linger beneath its surface. The title track captures that duality by cracking open the horizon even though Beck, caught in a peculiar solitude suspended between freedom and resignation, sounds too weary to fully savour it. A similar vulnerability suffuses ‘Run Away’, though the ache at its core never swells with enough gravity to pull the song under. ‘Failed Words’ begins with a rich piano foundation before gradually filling every pocket of surrounding air, while ‘Slow Canyon’ is dressed in production so opulent that its modesty nearly slips from view. Therein lies the album’s greatest achievement: making such delicate music sound enormous.
For all the studio craftsmanship on display, songwriting remains the load-bearing wall. Strip away the ornamentation, hand Beck an acoustic guitar and each cut retains its essence. ‘Bleed’ is the finest example. Opening on a featherlight drift, it expands with extraordinary patience as new textures accumulate precisely when they are needed. Nothing barges through the door and each element quietly takes its place until the arrangement unfurls into a celestial bloom. Beck’s vocals follow the same trajectory, ascending in controlled increments rather than rushing toward a crescendo.
Minor chords have become one of Beck’s most reliable tools in this phase of his career, grounding a voice so silky it almost evaporates on contact. Rather than manufacturing drama, ‘Disappearing Act’ simply lets the fatigue hover. This approach neatly summarises the record: sadness without theatrics, beauty without excess.
Even when ‘Ride Lonesome’ seems poised to stay earthbound, the patience it cultivates generally pays off. ‘It Ends Right Here’ spends much of its runtime locked into an endless build towards a moment that never quite arrives. Curiously, the anticipation begins to justify itself. With roughly a third remaining, a comfortably imposing buzz settles over the acoustic engine and thickens the atmosphere without rupturing it. The arrangement withholds immediate catharsis, creating space for longing to provide its own.
At the same time, not every piece repays investment quite so generously. ‘For Your Love’ offers a percussion-free breather, but reads more like a placeholder than a fully realised idea. The nursery-rhyme-like tune persisting throughout ‘Falling Through My Hands’ dulls its emotional pull, leaving the skeleton of a stronger song frustratingly visible. ‘If You Don’t Know What Love Is’ slips from the memory just as easily, coming into its own only once the vocals disappear during a luminous closing stretch.
Those dips are still easy to absorb because even the LP’s least essential passages bear the touch of someone deeply invested in the craft. That underlying care comes back into focus on ‘Beyond the Light’, which closes proceedings with disarming tenderness. Though it lacks some of the harmonic pull that makes the tracklist’s strongest material soar, its gentle expansion eventually restores the upward motion that sustains the album. There are times when a darker turn feels tantalisingly close, but Beck seems intent on preserving the fragile equilibrium. The payoff may not be the one listeners are primed to expect, but that reserve feels appropriate for an album so comfortable leaving certain emotions unresolved.
‘Ride Lonesome’ may not be Beck at his most audacious, nor does it pretend to be. In what is arguably his most discreet victory yet, he makes a persuasive case that ageing gracefully doesn’t necessarily mean yielding to the mundane. After demonstrating the elasticity of his imagination for decades, he is now mining deeper into well-trodden ground instead of constantly reaching for another trick. There is still wonder in his music, only now it comes from refinement rather than reinvention.
8/10