Beck — Morning Phase: the stir of life, heard on a green mountain road

Beck's Morning Phase (2014).

Entry seven of the From the Shelf series.

The Hakone pass, and this one record

Whenever I put this album on, I think of driving the Hakone pass. Close my eyes and there it is — spring green, the first stir of life. That scenery rises up out of the sound.

I still love Hakone and head out there most weekends. But the album and Hakone got tangled together long before that. Before my wife and I married, back when we were dating, I'd drive her up those mountain roads in the Prius I had at the time, this record playing the whole way.

I keep circling around the point, but while I'm here — let me recommend a hot spring I often visit in Hakone: Tenzan Tōji-kyō. Soaking there, looking out at the trees, I always feel the place is of a piece with the sound of Morning Phase. I'll write about Tenzan in a separate post.

As I wrote in the opening entry, this series is an attempt to look back not just at the albums themselves, but at the season I was listening in, and who was sitting beside me. Morning Phase is exactly that kind of record for me — inseparable from a Hakone spring and the person in the passenger seat.

I've loved Beck since I was a teenager

I've loved Beck since my teens.

My first impression was of a free-spirited kid, like a Boy Scout off making whatever music he pleased. Because he isn't bound to a band, he can take the image in his head and pull it straight out into sound. Every album has a clear concept, and he's put out one finely finished record after another.

A lot of his songs are experimental and aggressive — but every so often, as if loosening his grip, he hands you an acoustic, slow-tempo album. Beck strikes me as someone who balances light and shade, playing one against the other to hold the whole thing together.

Fuji Rock 2005 — the night it changed

That impression changed completely at Fuji Rock 2005 — the first time I saw Beck live. I was twenty that summer.

That set hit me hard. At one point the whole band sat down around a dinner table and played the tableware as instruments — and it was a showstopper. Plates, glasses, cutlery, all turning into rhythm. Playful and meticulously built at the same time — a performance only Beck could have put on.

If there was a single moment I became a fan, that was it. The "free-spirited kid" I'd been hearing on CD was right there in front of me, genuinely free. Beck has been someone special to me ever since that night.

In the line of Sea Change — fruit six years in the making

Follow Beck's "shade" — the acoustic, slow-tempo lineage — and you always arrive at Sea Change (2002). I've loved that quiet texture for as long as I can remember.

Morning Phase was made as a companion piece to that record, by Beck's own account. And it came a full six years after Modern Guilt (2008) — fruit that arrived after a long silence.

Built on strings and acoustic guitar, unhurried, the voice set right at the centre. This isn't Beck on the attack with experiments; this is Beck placing one note down at a time, like taking a slow breath.

A masterpiece people somehow skip

Honestly, even people who know Beck seem to skip right past this one.

What makes that funny is that Morning Phase won Album of the Year at the 57th Grammy Awards. For an album that took the top prize, it doesn't feel like it gets listened to all that much. Probably because it isn't the kind of record that grabs you with one flashy track. It's quiet, unshowy, and only comes into focus once you've heard it all the way through. Which is exactly why it's a record I want to take off the shelf and press on people.

How to listen — start with "Morning," but really, all the way through

If I had to name one track as a way in, it'd be "Morning," early in the album — a song like morning light slowly filling a room.

That said, this album suits being played straight through far more than picked at one track at a time. I won't go into the songs in detail. Just listen — ideally on a green mountain road.

Right then — let's go to Hakone.

Pick another one off the shelf

See Beck — Morning Phase on Amazon (JP)

That's entry seven of the From the Shelf series.

The quiet that this restless, world-rattling experimenter shows every now and then — I love it more than I can say. Whenever I want to feel the stir of life again, I think I'll take it back out to Hakone.

Next disc — undecided. I'll open the closet, see what catches my eye, and bring another one out.