Page 30 - Rolling Stone - India (December 2019)

Music

BECK’S DARK,

HEAVENLY

POP FANTASY

The alt-pop icon
teams up with
Pharrell for a
revelatory inner-
space journey
By DAVID FRICKE

Beck
Hyperspace
CAPITOL
★★★★★

omewhere inside
every album Beck has
S made since Mellow
Gold — his 1994 surprise
attack of slippery irony and
hip-hop bravado — is the solo
folk-blues singer caught on
that year’s One Foot in the
Grave, writing about despair
with a surrealist edge while
turned toward hope. That is
the Beck who jumps out here
in “Saw Lightning,” in looping
spasms of acoustic, skidding
Delta slide guitar.
Most of the song’s
apocalypse comes in
contemporary kicks. Beck
sings of great fire and flooding,
praying for rescue in a strident
android’s tone — like Skip
James in Auto-Tune — and
overdubbed layers of galactic
doo-wop. Pharrell Williams,
Beck’s chief accomplice

ILLUSTRATION BY
Bram Vanhaeren