As far as I can remember, Beck invented irony back in the 90s and he has since spent the latter part of his career deeply ashamed of it all and releasing meloncholic acoustic album after melancholic acoustic album furiously overcompensating for what he believes to be his past transgressions. ‘Morning Phase’ is frequently absolutely gorgeous, a release that desperately treats ‘Sea Change’ as a career highlight that he must always attempt to furiously replicate, but you can’t help but yearn for the times when he would regularly confront conventions and break down walls between genres, each release not just challenging himself but challenging people’s ideas and expectations of what pop/indie music could be. Sure, he obviously regrets the ‘With the plastic eyeballs/Spray-paint the vegetables/Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose’ nonsense lyrics of his earlier career, but does replacing it with the kind of oblique vagueness scattered across ‘Morning Phase’ really invest his music with any more of a sense of legitimacy?
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