BECK - Ride Lonesome

It probably wasn't all planned out when, back in 2002, Beck released "Sea Change", his first foray into orthodox singer-songwriting, admittedly suspended within Nigel Godrich's postmodern production. Maybe the idea started taking shape twelve years later, in 2014, with "Morning Phase", his second embrace of folk, this time with chamber-music overtones. A trilogy, then. Because it can hardly be a coincidence that Beck's third singer-songwriter album - and also his most classic one, as if to complete the transformation from trickster into bard - arrives exactly another twelve years later.

Granted, not even Beck could have foreseen the themes, colors and tones of this "Ride Lonesome", shaped by his recent divorce from wife Marissa Ribisi, the resulting solitude, the struggle to face it, and the process of aging, now viewed through fifty-six-year-old eyes. It grows out of these ideas translated into melancholy images, a solitary ride mixed by Godrich, letting acoustic country and folk guitars drift through an existential canyon, with Beck's voice in finer form than ever, lightly weathered by passing years, caught between dust and memory. The title track opens the album and builds its imagery, while the following "Run Away" enriches it with harp, piano and flickers of synth, turning it into a ballad that leans toward the dreamscapes of War On Drugs.

Streaked with dramatic strings, hammering piano and sensuous guitar touches à-la Chris Isaak, tracks like "Disappearing Act", "In The Night" and "Failed Words" keep brooding over absence and isolation, sketching out the album's more nocturnal side; while the long, drawn-out coda built on slide guitar and harmonica makes "If You Don't Know What Love Is" one of the record's most magical moments.
There's a whiff of formula peeking through in songs that feel less essential or urgent than the rest ("Slow Canyon", "Bleed") - we're a long way, in other words, from the gripping perfection of forerunner "Sea Change". Still, maybe it's a matter of age, but Beck seems far more at ease in this classic mode than in the highly synthetic experiments of 2019's "Hyperspace", which worked great for a handful of songs and decidedly less so across a whole album.

Maybe it's time to stop waiting another twelve years and slip into these clothes a bit more often.

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19/09/2026