Beck Announces First Album in Seven Years

Beck has launched his new album, Ride Lonesome, with a new song and video starring Denis Lavant. Ahead of “In the Night,” Beck introduced the album back in April with the title track and news of a tour. Ride Lonesome is due September 18 via Capitol.

The Mikai Karl-directed video starts with Lavant ruefully smoking a cigarette—I would happily have watched this for five minutes—before wandering around an apparently French, tumbledown apartment, gazing across a rustic skyline, and slowly retreating into himself. Watch it below.

For the Hyperspace follow-up, Beck reunited with the band that made Mutations, Sea Change, and Morning Phase: Smokey Hormel, Joey Waronker, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Roger Joseph Manning Jr., and Jason Falkner. They worked at his favorite studio, Room B at Hollywood’s United Studios, he said in a press release. And, he added, sometime collaborator Nigel Godrich mixed the album. “It had been a decade since we went in the studio and recorded Morning Phase. This time It felt like the playing and the chemistry had evolved and deepened—a sound that’s come together over the decades of working together. While we were revisiting a musical and physical place, it also felt like we were finding new sounds and emotional textures along the way.”

Read Mike Powell’s Sunday Review of Beck’s Mellow Gold.