Beck - Hyperspace

The Guardian 80

(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.

Pitchfork 65

On his 14th album, Beck roams across a pleasant, gently psychedelic landscape looking for something new.

The Guardian 60

(Capitol)
In what would have seemed a dream teaming early last decade, Pharrell Williams helped produce Beck’s occasionally lovely but unambitious 14th album

A few years ago, I asked Peter Buck what he missed about being in REM. “Being young and in the centre of my culture,” he replied. It’s a remark that came to mind when listening to the 14th studio album by Beck, seven of whose 11 tracks were co-produced and co-written by Pharrell Williams. This would have sounded like the most exciting collision of talents some time early in the last decade, the very definition of cultural centrality, but now makes one think: well, it was bound to happen sooner or later, wasn’t it?