Alternative
Capitol Records · 18 September 2026
The title track «Ride Lonesome» opens the record with four and a half minutes of acoustic guitar and little else, setting the tone for the twelve tracks that follow: forty-seven minutes recorded in Studio B at United Studios in Hollywood, produced by Beck himself and mixed by Nigel Godrich, with string arrangements by David Campbell — his father, who also scored «Sea Change» and «Morning Phase».
The record works best the more stripped-back it gets. «In the Night» runs two minutes fifty-eight and holds that length with a guitar winding beneath low strings, in territory first opened up by Nick Drake’s «River Man». On «Bleed» the strings sigh behind a strummed acoustic while he sings about not knowing how to feel about it, and on «Disappearing Act» the vocals stack up into a two-part harmony all on their own. Joey Waronker’s drums sound dry, without the reverb bath that covers almost everything else.
And that reverb ends up being the whole record’s limitation. The tracks share tempo, texture and depth of field, and by the halfway point what hypnotised at first starts to lull you to sleep: the cohesion comes at the cost of a long half hour that moves at exactly the same pace throughout. «It Ends Right Here» and «Falling Through My Hands» are the two that stand apart, and also the two that stick in your memory once the record ends.
It closes with «Beyond the Light», five minutes and thirty-three seconds that build slowly and deliberately echo the ending of «Morning Phase». It’s Beck’s fifteenth studio album and his first since «Hyperspace», from November 2019 — six years and ten months, the longest gap he’s ever left between two records.
Rating: 8/10
Text by Marçal Bonastre