Beck tells us about ‘Ride Lonesome’: “It took a long time to get that kind of courage to be this direct and emotional”

Beck has spoken to NME about tapping into a certain spiritual and emotional realm for his new album ‘Ride Lonesome’, as well as his often misunderstood genre-hopping musical journey to here from the ’90s.

We met Beck in a studio space at his label’s London offices where he was lucid but admittedly “in jet lag mode, man” – quite fitting to talk about his beautiful new album ‘Ride Lonesome’, which he described as a “slow motion, twilight, Mojave, acoustic, a trance of sound and emotion”

It’s been seven long years since his previous album ‘Hyperspace ‘, but it’s not as if the singer, songwriter and composer has been resting on laurels. As well as the enforced stop-gap of COVID and lockdowns, he’s gone out on several world tours – including his acclaimed orchestral theatre run last year – as well as labouring on the songs that would go on to make up ‘Ride Lonesome’ with gruelling attention to detail.

“In another era, it probably would have come out a year and a half ago,” he told NME . “I was initially going to finish this record and have it come out in 2023, but I ended up shelving it for two years. I wasn’t sure about the songs, I didn’t think they were strong enough, and I just wasn’t in the mood for what the record would require to really fully live it and bring it to life.”

“I’m realistic!” he replied. “You hope for the best for some of your songs, but as you get older you’re a little more realistic about the song is and what it could be.”

A record in the more acoustic and emotion-swept lineage of his classics ‘Sea Change’ and Grammy-winning ‘Morning Phase’ rather than the genre-smashing alt-rock party soundtrack of ‘Mellow Gold’, ‘Odelay’ or ‘Midnite Vultures’, Beck teamed up again with some old friends to bottle a different type of magic. It was made with his original touring band from the ’90s that recorded ‘Sea Change’ and ‘Morning Phase’ and mixed by Nigel Godrich (who produced the former), a collection of musicians Beck described as his version “The Wrecking Crew”.

“There’s a musical chemistry that’s something gratifying for us,” he shared. “It’s a relationship over many decades that just gets deeper and has more shapes, colour and nuance through time.”

Check out the rest of our interview with Beck below, where he also told us about putting together “a heartbreak record”, his struggle to be sincere when people in the ’90s found it “nauseating”, and why human connection will always win out over AI.