Skip to main content

Beck: Hyperspace review – dewy, plush and on-trend

(EMI)

Colors, Beck’s last album, won two Grammies. Its sequel finds Beck retaining the marketplace nous of producer Greg Kurstin on one track and adding that of Pharrell Williams, purveyor of cheek-popping flair on more than half the album. Beck’s records can often veer away from the sound of their predecessors, but Hyperspace is no minimal DIY folk jam: it’s dewy, plush and on-trend.

Beck’s eclecticism arguably paved the way for the bonfire of the genres in the present decade – even phenomena such as Old Town Road. Here, Saw Lightning is a genre-torching bop that harks all the way back to Beck’s Loser days, but it’s a red herring. Lit by the glow of vintage video games and a kind of hazy west coast liminality, Hyperspace sounds mushily contemporary, at least at first. It glides along on lasers, coasts on thermals – until suddenly it doesn’t. Deep turmoil festers at the centre of these superficially dazed confections, featuring Auto-Tune, multi-tracking, bleached funk, raps and woah-woah-woahs. The gestation of the album coincided with the breakdown of Beck’s marriage of 15 years. Once the lyrical sorrow and apocalyptic visions hit home, Hyperspace is revealed as a bleak, spacey R&B tour de force.

Continue reading...

from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2OIqkhH
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tracey Emin decorates Regent's Park and a celebration of Islamic creativity – the week in art

Emin and others survey the state of sculpture, Glenn Brown takes his decadent imagination to Newcastle and artists offer northern exposure – all in your weekly dispatch Frieze Sculpture Park Tracey Emin, Barry Flanagan and John Baldessari are among the artists decorating Regent’s Park with a free survey of the state of sculpture. • Regent’s Park, London , 4 July until 7 October. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2IDCpPV
Post a Comment
Read more

When Brooklyn was queer: telling the story of the borough's LGBTQ past

In a new book, Hugh Ryan explores the untold history of queer life in Brooklyn from the 1850s forward, revealing some unlikely truths For five years Hugh Ryan has been hunting queer ghosts through the streets of Brooklyn, amid the racks of New York’s public libraries, among its court records and yellow newspaper clippings to build a picture of their lost world. The result is When Brooklyn Was Queer, a funny, tender and disturbing history of LGBTQ life that starts in an era, the 1850s, when those letters meant nothing and ends before the Stonewall riots started the modern era of gay politics. Continue reading... from Culture | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2H9Zexs
Post a Comment
Read more