Beck has now spent 15 years struggling with the very challenge he presented in the first half of his career: Who does he want to be? After a string of minor statements, Hyperspace doesn’t reignite his spark but it sheds a little light. Produced mostly with Pharrell, his 14th album is a breezy song cycle that rarely rises above a warped, shimmering sigh. Following 2014’s densely orchestrated Morning Phase and 2017’s labored pop turn Colors, it immediately feels like a relief. Like his best records, you can imagine the mood board hanging in the studio—synth-pop, vaporwave, trap beats, the future as imagined in ’80s movies—as he bends his influences into new shapes. At first, the plan was to collaborate with Pharrell on just one song, but after a few sessions, they felt there was more ground to cover within this gently psychedelic landscape. It was a good instinct.
The album sounds best when they stick to the plan. The cloying, stomp-clap single “Saw Lightning” is an outlier; it’s also the type of song that might have kept Beck up at night after “Loser” threatened to turn him into a one-hit wonder a quarter-century ago. Maybe he imagined himself at 49 searching for a hit while rapping over distorted slide guitar and so he decided to pivot his career in every other conceivable direction, as quickly as possible. “I would have thrived in a time like this,” he recently told NME. “I was creating so much music and my limitation was that I didn’t have the equipment to record myself. If I had a laptop and SoundCloud I would have loved it.” His sentiment rings true—particularly in a year when the biggest breakout hit was a grungy, tossed-off hip-hop-country hybrid—but his use of the past tense speaks louder. Why isn’t Beck thriving in a time like this?
He’s found himself in a strange position. Kind of like the Flaming Lips, he has been grandfathered into the role of an eccentric major-label lifer, and, like the Flaming Lips, he occasionally wanders into the interesting-in-theory vanity project netherworld. But Beck still adheres to old-school tenets of the industry: big singles, high-profile collaborations, brand partnerships. Hyperspace was previewed with a blandly conventional Amazon Exclusive set of Prince covers, an especially damning moment as it coincided with the 20-year anniversary of Midnite Vultures, Beck’s spiritual tribute to Prince. It’s been a long time since he successfully integrated his personality and his music. On a trajectory more like a blockbuster film franchise, his biggest release of the decade was essentially a reboot of 2002’s Sea Change.
Despite its missteps, the smooth, twilight sound of Hyperspace pushes him toward new territory. During the second half of the record, the sky seems to darken and the songs bind together into a mini-suite with overlapping themes and melodies. It culminates with a gospel choir bursting out of “Everlasting Nothing,” but the whole record works toward a more muted kind of celebration. Along the way, there are guest verses from Pharrell and L.A. songwriter Terrell Hines, undetectable vocals from Sky Ferreira and Coldplay’s Chris Martin, and yet the mood remains intimate, solitary even. Its best songs—“Chemical,” “Dark Places”—are like lullabies delivered from a space shuttle with just one person on it. You can feel the distance.
The results are consistently pleasant to listen to, though there’s a subtle dissonance between medium and message. Thematically these ballads draw a line to Sea Change, Beck’s initial foray into heartbreak and sincerity. Many of the songs on Hyperspace continue a weary road narrative, their lush settings just a blur outside a moving window. A few moments allude to his recent divorce from actress Marissa Ribisi and another makes a direct, slightly jarring reference to using heroin. But all of them search for escape in their vague, downer narratives. He rarely focuses on any thought for too long, and the transience works in his favor. If he’s going to drift, at least he’ll enjoy the view.
“I feel so ugly when you see through me,” he sings midway through the album. At one point in his career, it might have sounded like a confession, back when his constant reinventions felt like a defense against being pigeonholed. On those early records, he’d bury apocalyptic visions in music that was playful and referential, rarely drawing attention to how much thought was being poured into every decision. Nowadays, it’s less rewarding to dig for the substance beneath his aesthetics. There’s less to see through. “There was a point where I was, like, ‘Is this over?’” he recently admitted to the New Yorker. “But I wake up with songs going. Melodies, harmonies, a bass line. It’s like there’s a radio station playing in my head all the time.” Listening to Hyperspace provides a similar experience—sometimes he hits pure signal, and sometimes it’s just background noise as he gets to wherever he’s going next.
Buy: Rough Trade
