{"id":620075,"date":"2026-09-18T14:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T14:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/620075\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T14:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T14:36:09","slug":"album-review-beck-hits-a-sad-beautiful-new-high-on-ride-lonesome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/620075\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Beck Hits a Sad, Beautiful New High on ‘Ride Lonesome’"},"content":{"rendered":"

He returns to the gorgeously forlorn folk of records like Sea Change on his first new LP in seven years<\/p>\n

\n\tBeck<\/a>\u2019s first album in seven years is a sublime return to the somber folk-rock of career highpoints like 2002\u2019s Sea Change<\/a> and 2014\u2019s Morning Phase<\/a>. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to cry a river,\u201d he offers against the stately drift of the album opening title track, \u201cRide Lonesome.\u201d Here the river of tears leads to an ocean of mellow gold. With its fragile acoustic melodies, desolate lyrics, and spare, subtle studio accompaniment, Ride Lonesome is like Nick Drake\u2019s mumble-folk masterpiece Bryter Layter as the work of a lovelorn Laurel Canyon soft-rock poet. It\u2019s been quite a while since Beck was associated with jokey post-modern irony but he\u2019s rarely sounded this committed to deploying gorgeous melodies as a balm against his existential hangdog blues.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tOn \u201cRun Away\u201d he sings, \u201cthere\u2019s nothing left to say\/On desolation day,\u201d brightening the grim wanderlust of his lyrics with a sweetly ascending California folk-rock track. \u201cIn the Night\u201d is peak Drake-core, a brittle acoustic melody, a moonshadow of strings, and lyrics about darkness burying lies and how teachers and saints will walk you to the grave. \u201cFailed Words\u201d plays like a distant memory of an old Seventies AM radio piano ballad. On \u201cBleed\u201d he\u2019s as dejected as sad-Seventies Neil Young, singing \u201cthe sacraments, all you sacred cows\/I can live without you now,\u201d as his multi-tracked voice echoes through the song like a kind of chorus of distraught angels.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tRide Lonesome is amorphous, hazy, dappled, and almost impossibly pretty. Listening can feel like you\u2019re floating in amniotic fluid. But the album never gets vague or sleepy. Every song stands out on its own. \u201cFalling Through My Hands\u201d is one of the finest lost-cause ballads he\u2019s written, a fading-love song with a melody that sounds a touch like Radiohead\u2019s \u201cNo Surprises,\u201d poignant woodwind accompaniment, healing Beach Boys harmonies, and a grace note harmonica solo. \u201cIf You Don\u2019t Know What Love Is\u201d transmogrifies Gram Parsons\u2019 \u201cWild Horses\u201d into a paean to keeping your heart glowing amidst terror and darkness. He closes the album with the heart-splitting post-breakup benediction, \u201cBeyond the Light,\u201d riding as lonesome as a poor boy can ride and as on top of his game as ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He returns to the gorgeously forlorn folk of records like Sea Change on his first new LP in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[17834,146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-620075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-beck","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}