Morning Phase by Beck album review

You may not know it but you have definitely heard Beck's music somewhere. The veteran singer songwriter has had a long 21 year old career and "Morning Phase" is his 12th album. Beck is probably most well known for his hit singles "Loser", "Where It's At" and "E-Pro" and you'd recognise these tunes if you heard them. Yes, the man's music has featured in a number of various entertainment products such as the video game Rock Band, plus he's even had his own Futurama episode too!

Basically, "Morning Phase" is a largely acoustic album so a lot of the songs sound pretty similar at first. However, there are subtle interesting parts but they really aren't that noticeable. For example, "Blue Moon" has a mandolin part but there's also other melodic parts too so you can't really hear the part where the song tries to be a bit different. Also, "Wave" features a string section and Beck's voice gets completely lost in it and it sounds really messy to be honest.

To say that this album is chilled out is an understatement. In fact, it's too chilled out for it's own good at times and it ends up sounding quite dull. By the time you get to some of the final tracks ("Blackbird Chain, "Turn Away" and "Country Down") you'll be totally bored. Sure, you could argue that this record is mostly trying to focus on being melodic, but I honestly can't remember a single hook on this album because every song just slogs along really slowly.

There are some decent parts on this record though. It starts off nicely with a double helping of "Morning" and "Heart Is A Drum" and these songs really help to set the tone for the rest of the album. There are some swell falsetto vocals, acoustic guitars and pianos in these songs but that's all you can really say about them. "Unforgiven" is excellent for it's use of flanger effect chords too and it's probably the only track that really stands out.

It pains me to say this but I really didn't enjoy this record. Other people will probably love it though because it's got a relaxing vibe and it's melodic in a kind of atmospheric way. Personally, I preferred Beck on records such as "Odelay" where he was fusing a bunch of genres together. Anyone who's looking for something a bit slow and quiet will find "Morning Phase" perfect but I'm gonna give this one a miss.

OVERALL RATING: 5/10

BEST SONGS: MORNING, HEART IS A DRUM, UNFORGIVEN.
WORST SONG: WAVE.