HOW BECK BANISHED THE BLUES
BECK: Colors (Capitol) Verdict: Beck shades it ★★★★✩ P!NK: Beautiful Trauma (RCA) Verdict: Reflective return ★★★✩✩
HE MADE his name as a talented oddball, moving between rock, funk and hiphop after breaking through with 1994’ s Loser and The New Pollution two years later.
But singer- songwriter Beck Hansen’s most lasting music has generally been inspired by heartache. Having bared his soul on 2002’s Sea Change, he looked to a broken romance again on 2014’s mellow Morning Phase.
Just a few months later, he wrote another set of sad songs and asked guest performers to sing them for him on the Beck Song Reader.
In terms of banishing his blues, that double-header seems to have done the trick. Returning after three years away, he is heavy-hearted no longer, and Colors, his 13th album, is an animated comeback with so many bright ideas that it might just endure in the same manner as his more downbeat classics.
In turning to pop producer Greg Kurstin, best known for his work with Adele and Lily Allen, the Californian taps into one of the autumn’s unexpected trends — that of the experienced male rocker employing a proven Top 40 hitmaker to give his music a radio-friendly sheen.
The past two months have seen Queens Of The Stone Age team up with Mark Ronson to deliver the excellent, dance-influenced Villains. The latest releases by the Foo Fighters and Liam Gallagher were finished with help from Kurstin.
THE union of Kurstin and Beck isn’t a complete surprise. The producer, a talented jazz musician, was once the singer’s touring keyboardist, and the pair play nearly every instrument themselves on an ebullient album that bounces between rock and dance.
Beck’s buoyant mood is clear from the off. ‘I’ve got all the love you need,’ he sings against a backdrop of pan pipes and surf harmonies on the title track. Those high spirits run on into Seventh Heaven and I’m So Free — pop-punk in the punchy style of Weezer’s Buddy Holly.
Knowing nods abound. The sunny Dear Life sounds like The Beatles filtered through the late Nebraskan singer elliott Smith. I can hear traces of The Police’s I Can’t Stand Losing You in the drive-time pop of No Distraction.
The topic of information overload is tackled on the hip-hop-influenced Wow. But, unlike Arcade Fire’s witheringly disparaging take on the era of ‘infinite content’ on this summer’s everything Now, Beck sounds positively engaged by the choices on offer in the digital age.
He celebrates the domestic bliss he enjoys with actress wife Marissa Ribisi as he breaks into a playful rap on Up All Night before a sparkling ballad, Fix Me, rounds off a wonderfully eclectic return.
PINK — or P!nk, as she now prefers — has softened her approach since her arrival as a loud-mouthed rival to Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
Now a 38-year-old mother of two, the Philly singer, born Alecia Moore, strikes a reflective, world-weary tone on Beautiful Trauma.
Working with a number of bigname producers, including — him again — Greg Kurstin, she addresses her volatile, but enduring, 11-year marriage to motocross star Carey Hart on the melodramatic title track before yearning for a simpler life on Barbies.
Despite her mixed emotions and the admission, on For Now, that her brash nature ‘gets me in trouble’, she never sinks into self-pity.
And rather than trying to duplicate old hits, like Get The Party Started, she takes unexpected detours: venturing into the folk-pop domain of ed Sheeran on Where We Go, and adopting a jazzy tone on You Get My Love, a ballad that is all the better for sounding raw rather than processed.