It’s just about enough to keep you browsing, but never enough to inspire. The whole album, with its dabbling through styles (See Through proves only that Beck isn’t convincing doing stripped-back R&B) makes it sound like walking through a mid-market clothes shop on a Saturday afternoon. We have a huge collection of Vinyls, CDs, Cassettes & other. Made with long-time associate Cole MGN, Die Waiting stops trying to be contemporary, kicks back and is as relaxed a groove as Beck has ever provided. Yet it’s still better than most artists because, when it fires, Hyperspace is spectacular.
The moments of loveliness, such as Stratosphere and Die Waiting, co-written with Cole MGN and Kossisko Konan, are great, but hardly enough to lift Hyperspace into another dimension. Beck : Hyperspace (LP, Album, Ltd, Sil) is available for sale at our shop at a great price. Its faults make Hyperspace Beck’s least substantial album since 2006’s The Information. It’s more that it feels as though neither of them stretched themselves.
It’s not that Hyperspace is ever truly disappointing: Williams and Beck know how to make records sound pretty great, and the songwriting is never poor. Listening to Saw Lightning, though, with its slide guitar, martial drums, an assortment of whoops, ping-ponging electronics and the sound of the kitchen sink being lightly strummed, you’re inclined to ask: “You sure about that?” So what does Williams bring to the party? Beck said Williams encouraged him to take a more singer-songwriterly approach, and made the production more minimal. It is little surprise to find that Chris Martin sings backup, given it floats somewhere between early-70s Pink Floyd and Coldplay, all spacily non-specific lyrics (bar a specific line about injecting) about a friend who overdosed, consumed by yearning melancholy. Produced by Beck, it sounds utterly unconcerned with anything other than being big and beautiful. The irony is that Stratosphere, the best song on Hyperspace, has nothing to do with Williams.