All the colors, see the colors, feel the colors ... do you feel alive?
October 13, 2017 7:50 AM   Subscribe

If you're looking to be properly un-spoopy in October, specifically on today, Friday the 13th, Beck's 13th studio album Colors might be the thing for you, if you want some solid, generally upbeat dance-rock. "It's like if the Clash decided to bring in some disco and hip-hop beats," he explains. "I wanted the songs to sound great in the car or at a party." (Sydney Morning Herald interview with Andrew Murfett, with a long look at Beck's life and musical career) If that sounds like your kind of thing, you can stream it on YouTube, Apple Music or Spotify via Pitchfork, and Soundcloud Go+.

After the "mopey masterpiece" of award-winning Morning Phase (YT playlist), Beck took some time to develop his next album, though the singles have been trickling out for a while. The first single, “Dreams” (YT, official audio), a big, slick number that throws Beck’s voice over some liquid disco-funk guitars and a high-stepping stadium-rock drum beat, was released way back in June of 2015. It would be another year until the next single would come out. “Wow” (YT, official video) was the brilliant wild funk single, and he discussed how the new record found him in "a happy place." And then it was announced that his next album would come out on Oct. 21, 2016, but that date was withdrawn (and passed up). “Dear Life” (YT, official lyric video) found him singing over a jaunty piano, spry guitar and upbeat drums in the 3rd single, which came out on August 24 of this year. Beck recently said that the plan was to release the album a year after Morning Phase, but as attention to that album continued, this next album kept getting delayed.

Finally it's here, and album reviews are pretty positive, with such headlines like The musical chameleon lets loose on this pop triumph (Thomas Smith, NME) and Lucky 13th album is all of Beck's feelgood summers at once (Michael Dwywer, Rolling Stone AUS), but some also pick up on sounds from other artists, as Dan Weiss did in his Consequence of Sound review:
... it’s hard to tell if a highlight like the minor-key funk of “Dreams” sounds great in and of itself or because it evokes both MGMT’s “Electric Feel” and Spoon’s “Hot Thoughts”. Then again, why not give him the credit? The original slacker king of plunderphonics was both the joker and the thief in his heyday. You can still hear marginal residue of the man who managed to be compared to both Dylan and Prince within the same five-year period. You just won’t find those comparisons so much lately.
Beck says the extra time was in part because "these are complex songs all trying to do two or three things at once. It's not retro and not modern. To get everything to sit together so it doesn't sound like a huge mess was quite an undertaking."

If you're trying to parse the lyrics, here's the album's lyrics, annotated on Genius, to help you. But don't take someone else's interpretation as correct. "Listen closely and there's room for interpretation," he says, coyly. "None of it stops you just enjoying the songs in a pure sense. You can listen on different levels. I thought a lot about that. These days, we know far too much." (SMH again)
posted by filthy light thief (17 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
"It's like if the Clash decided to bring in some disco and hip-hop beats." ... Wasn't that Big Audio Dynamite?
posted by chocolate_butch at 7:55 AM on October 13, 2017 [29 favorites]


Finally!!!
posted by stinkfoot at 8:03 AM on October 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


I'd consider myself a Beck fan, but this album sounds bland and overprocessed to me.
posted by Catblack at 8:06 AM on October 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


I agree, compared to Morning Phase, it's a light pop album, but it hooked me on first listen, so here we are :)
posted by filthy light thief at 8:07 AM on October 13, 2017


After the "mopey masterpiece" of award-winning Morning Phase (YT playlist ), Beck took some time to develop his next album, though the singles have been trickling out for a while.

Close, Morning Phase came out in Feb 2014 and Colors was supposed to come out that fall, sort of ying-yang albums, but I think the success of Morning Phase and the effort required to perfect the pop songs in Colors work were both bigger than Beck expected.
posted by furtive at 8:12 AM on October 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


chocolate_butch: ""It's like if the Clash decided to bring in some disco and hip-hop beats." ... Wasn't that Big Audio Dynamite?"

And a big chunk of Sandinista.
posted by octothorpe at 8:13 AM on October 13, 2017 [8 favorites]


Cripes, I was a Beck megafan back in the day but life intervened somewhere around The Information, I moved to the city, think he had a kid, I lost track, and it felt those days were long gone. Then last week I was trying to tune a radio in a rainstorm on a tiny island off the west coast of Ireland when a familiar voice spluttered into phase. "That's Beck!" I cried. Couldn't tell if it was a song I knew due to dodgy signal pick up but the sound was clear as a bell, and it felt like a clarion. Turns out it was the new single. I don't know where any of this is going other than it thrilled me to bits that after ten years of wandering our separate ways it seems the old magic remains. So thanks filthy, I'll be digging in to all of the above now I'm back on the mainland, literally and musically, to hear where this old pal is at.
posted by freya_lamb at 8:38 AM on October 13, 2017 [6 favorites]




... Wasn't that Big Audio Dynamite?"

And a big chunk of Sandinista.


and Combat Rock.
posted by philip-random at 9:51 AM on October 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


So, it's NOT a tribute album to the 1988 Sean Penn/Robert Duvall movie?
posted by Chrysostom at 10:22 AM on October 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


What's spoopy?
posted by bshort at 12:21 PM on October 13, 2017 [1 favorite]


Shit, man, I'm like three Beck albums behind at this point. Just switched from my preferred work Pandora station to this, so thanks!
posted by soren_lorensen at 12:40 PM on October 13, 2017


The fact that Odelay came out 21 years ago is one of a handful of things that have made me feel really, really old lately.
posted by pipeski at 12:43 PM on October 13, 2017 [12 favorites]


Up All Night is my current ok-you-have-to-do-something-better-get-amped jam, looking forward to the whole album - thanks!

(The video is also Very Beck).
posted by Gin and Broadband at 3:21 PM on October 13, 2017


The fact that Odelay came out 21 years ago is one of a handful of things that have made me feel really, really old lately.

I distinctly remember the first time I heard Where it's At: in the back of cab at maybe 5am after an insanely long video editing session, about which I felt mostly just relief of finally having finished a very complicated project. I can't believe that was only 21 years ago.
posted by philip-random at 5:04 PM on October 13, 2017 [2 favorites]


  The fact that Odelay came out 21 years ago

So, uh, maybe don't call us when the New Age gets old enough to drink …?
posted by scruss at 5:25 PM on October 14, 2017 [2 favorites]


I've listened to the first 7 or 8 tracks and so far SO good!
posted by zardoz at 10:19 PM on October 19, 2017


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