107△
LONG ROAD
Colors, on which
Beck collaborated
with superproducer
Greg Kurstin, is the
47-year-old’s 13th
studio album.Beck began
working on
Colors in 2013,
but production
was interrupted
by his frequent
touringAN ODD THING HAPPENED WHEN BECK’S
Morning Phase won the Grammy for Album of the
Year in 2015: he got Kanye’d. As he was walking up
to accept his gramophone trophy from Prince, the
outspoken rapper started to follow him onstage,
feigning a reprise of his infamous 2009 stage-
crashing of Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music
Awards. Beck reacted like you might expect the
king of ’90s slackerdom to, looking like a shruggy
emoticon come to life. No surprise that, unlike
Swift, Beck didn’t use the moment to fuel his
follow-up album,Colors.
In fact, this new record has been gestating since
beforeMorning Phase, when Beck started carving
out time with Greg Kurstin, now a mega-producer
for pop stars like Adele and Sia. The two have
been collaborators for years. (Kurstin was Beck’s
keyboardist for the 2003 Sea Change tour.) But
Colors is something more: Beck and Kurstin wrote
a majority of the 10 songs together and played
pretty much every instrument you hear, except for
the strings and some background vocals.
The result is antithetical to the somber
arrangements ofMorning Phase. Beck’s acoustic
melancholy is replaced with a medley of psychedelic
garage pop and funky dance numbers. It’s all very
joyous.Colors feels like a cousin to earlier albums
Midnite Vultures (1999) andGuero (2005). On
“No Distraction,” Beck laments losing time and
love as they “Pull you to the left/ Pull you to the
right/ Pull you in all directions,” but on the fuzzy
guitar number “I’m So Free,” he takes the opposite
route, declaring, “I’m on a one-man waiting list/
I’m bored again/ I buried all my memories/ I’m so
free now.” On “Dreams” and “Seventh Heaven,” he
fully embraces surrealism, a longtime comfort zone.
“Up All Night” is a crowd-pleasing party anthem.IF THERE’S A STANDOUT SONG,it’s the album’s
second single, “Wow,” released in June 2016.
At first listen, it’s utterly ridiculous. Beck begins
by exclaiming “Giddy up” four times, before
moving into a slow, oozy funk beat over which he
repeatedly croons, “It’s like wow/ It’s like right
now.” There’s a line about living your best life.
And one about living each day like it’s your last.
And another about living each day like you’re on
your front lawn doing jiujitsu while a “girl in a
bikini with a Lamborghini shih tzu” is nearby. It’s
borderline nonsensical. But it’s also vintage weird
Beck, rearing his head for our weird times.
Which is really whatColors should be. Beck’sbest albums have never really been about the
micro-eras they were made in. (He’s not the type to
pontificate.) But they were thoroughly shaped by
them and, in retrospect, manage to capture some of
their essence, like a time capsule for vibes.Midnite
Vultures was a fun-house mirror of the gonzo excess
of the late ’90s;Guero an expression of renewed
vigor in the mid-2000s. We’ll have to wait and see
whetherColors, down the line, will tell us what
it was like to live through this reality-television
presidency and all its various anxieties.
For now, it’s just a lot of fun.Colors shows that
Beck is still the type of artist who can spend years
carefully crafting songs and have them feel rather
timeless right away—even in a time of joyless
news cycles. In any case, if you escape into Beck’s
kaleidoscope for 40 minutes, you too may believe
that life can be “like wow.” MUSIC
Beck’sColors finds
joy in its time
By Mike AyersEIGHT YEARS: DAN FUNDERBURGH; BECK: JACKIE BUTLER—GETTY IMAGES