THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER2, 2019 41
poem by John Ashbery, he replied with
a picture of a tall pile of Ashbery’s
books. The spines were cracked.
T
he softness of the synthesizers on
“Hyperspace” gives many of the
songs a pleading and almost hymnlike
feel. “Over time, I became fascinated
by the beauty of a really simple line,”
he told me. “Something that, if you
were in a conversation, you wouldn’t
think about twice but, in the context
of a song, it becomes really powerful.”
Seven of the album’s eleven songs
were either co-written or co-produced
by Pharrell Williams, an architect of
monumental hits for Snoop Dogg
(“Drop It Like It’s Hot”), Gwen Ste-
fani (“Hollaback Girl”), and Daft Punk
(“Get Lucky”). Though Williams has
in many ways defined the sound of con-
temporary pop, his contributions to
“Hyperspace” don’t approximate any-
thing else on the radio. “Saw Light-
ning,” which Williams co-wrote, co-
produced, and performed on (his verse
is loose and breezy, like a garment that’s
had all its seams ripped out), is both
minimal and maximal, a precise, skit-
tering beat punctuated by slide guitar,
whoops, and a throbbing bass line.
“He’s a smart guy—he understands
the seasons, he understands the pub-
lic temperament, he knows exactly when
to show up,” Williams told me of Beck.
“And it always feels good, because he
delivers it his way. I’ve always loved
that about Beck. He’s out-careered all
of his contemporaries. He was never
really in the same lane as them. He was
always this guy walking in a green pas-
ture. They were on a highway in Los
Angeles or Seattle, and he was in a green
pasture in his mind.”
Williams found that their approaches
to the material were distinct but com-
plementary. “The intersection for us
was ‘What inherently feels good and
fresh?’” he said. “A rock is a rock, but
we use different kinds of chisels.”
If any narrative thread unites Beck’s
music, it is a gentle existential duress, a
sense that nothing is permanent. “No-
where child keep on running / In your
time you’ll find something,” he sings on
“Everlasting Nothing,” the final track on
“Hyperspace.” On “Chemical,” a woozy,
spectral meditation on the intoxication
of love, the chorus becomes an implora-
tion: “And love is a chemical/Start it,
start it again,” he sings, his voice dissi-
pating into mist. He often writes about
the extraordinary moment when two
people become awake to each other. Like
all of us, he is hungering for a brush with
the sublime, but he understands that life
is more likely to be banal. On “Unevent-
ful Days,” the first single from “Hyper-
space,” he arrives at an emotional détente
with a partner: “Nothing you could say
could make it come to life/I don’t have
a way to make you change your mind,”
he sings. His voice sounds tender and
exhausted. The song follows a bleary syn-
thesizer riff, and although it isn’t an es-
pecially glum melody, it communicates
a precise ennui. How long should a per-
son keep waiting for something to feel
good again? In an early verse, Beck sings
the word “alone,” and a vocal effect makes
it sound as if he is, quite literally, pow-
ering down. This sort of liminal state—
after the panic of heartbreak, but before
whatever happens next—is rarely com-
municated very effectively in song. Beck
seems to know its contours instinctively.
In some ways, he said, “Hyperspace”
is all about the idea of wanting. “That,
to me, is what underlies the digital mo-
ment—a longing for something,” he
said. “The cliché about technology
is that it replaces human interaction,somehow. But I think it’s the opposite.
I think ultimately it makes you hun-
grier for the real connection.”T
he Pacific Dining Car opened an
outpost in Santa Monica in 1990,
though it feels as if it has been serving
shrimp cocktail since the dawn of time.
When Beck and I arrived, late on a Fri-
day evening, the dining room was library-
quiet. We crossed a stretch of elaborate
carpet to a green vinyl booth. A silver
vase held a single yellow rose. The waiters
were wearing bow ties. “It’s like an episode
of ‘Bonanza’ directed by David Lynch,”
Beck said. He ordered a rib-eye steak,
creamed spinach, and mashed potatoes.
After dinner, we drove to the ocean.
Beck likes to check in with the Pacific
once in a while. We got out of the car
and walked along the waterfront. The
moon was a tiny silver crescent. We spoke
about how to know if and when you’re
done making art. “There was a point
where I was, like, ‘Is this over?’” he said.
“But I wake up with songs going. Mel-
odies, harmonies, a bass line. It’s like
there’s a radio station playing in my head
all the time.” Maybe, I said, the only
point of art is to make the thing that you
most want to exist in the world. He
thought about it for a moment. “I don’t
know if I’ve done that yet,” he said. “I hate when he stays late on the throne just
to avoid the tension at home.”