Beck: Ride Lonesome (Indie Exclusive Dark Green Vinyl) [CAPITOL]

Why you'll love it

This is the Indie Exclusive dark green pressing, made for record shops like ours. Beck reunited the band from Sea Change, Morning Phase and Mutations for his first album since Hyperspace, with Nigel Godrich mixing. SPIN put it simply: "Introspective Beck may be the best version of Beck."

This edition

• Indie Exclusive pressing
• Dark green vinyl
• Single LP, 12 songs across two sides

About the album

There are two Becks, roughly speaking: the one who throws the party and the one who sits by the window with an acoustic guitar while it rains, and every few years the second one gets the keys to the studio. Ride Lonesome is very much his turn. For his 15th studio album (and first since Hyperspace in 2019), Beck called back the players who shaped Sea Change, Morning Phase and Mutations, Smokey Hormel, Joey Waronker, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Roger Joseph Manning Jr. and Jason Falkner, and set them up in Room B at United Studios in Hollywood. Beck produced it himself, and Nigel Godrich, the man behind the console on those earlier "sad Beck" records, came in to mix.

In Beck's own words, "the playing and the chemistry had evolved and deepened," and you can hear it. The title track floats on mournful pedal steel and soft drums, "In the Night" folds a string arrangement into its folk-rock (its video stars the French actor Denis Lavant), and "Failed Words" opens on hazy piano that seems to grow an orchestra out of thin air. SPIN called it "a gentle wander through subtle instrumentation and sadly wistful vocals," which is about right, though it undersells how big the record sounds for something so intimate. If Sea Change is the one you reach for on grey November afternoons, this is its long-awaited companion, and Toronto has plenty of grey November afternoons.

"Introspective Beck may be the best version of Beck."
SPIN

On Capitol, first out in 2026.