Colors, Beck’s 13th studio album, sees the musical magpie from Los Angeles repeat one of his favourite tricks with a chameleonic change of genre and mood from 2014’s Morning Phase. That previous album existed in a perpetual state of sun-kissed mellowness but anyone who wanted more of the same will be sorely disappointed. Colors stands as its complete opposite, almost totally and relentlessly upbeat in its execution – occasionally losing a little bit of soul in the process.

Recorded over a four year period with current go-to producer Greg Kurstin, the album kicks off with the title track. There was never a truer word sung than its chorus of “All the colours, see the colours, make the colours, feel the colours”. After Morning Phase’s sombre and grey mood, Beck is casting off the clouds with the musical version of an exploding rainbow or a dazzling kaleidoscope. With a catchy pan flute solo thrown in for good measure, it acts as a perfect gateway to what awaits. It’s followed by ‘Seventh Heaven’, an earworm destined to wriggle inside your brain and be a song that you wake up singing. ‘I’m So Free’ is a classic example of Beck’s freestyle approach to genres, mashing pop-punk and hip-hop into four minutes of thrilling, bouncing, carefree fun. Beck has always been impervious to easy categorisation, flitting between genres like a dragonfly in the breeze on a late summer’s day

Occasionally the album drifts between genres too much, preventing the album from hanging together properly and almost becoming akin to a playlist instead. ‘Dear Life’ sounds eerily similar to Scissors Sister right down to the jaunty bar-room piano and vocal stylisation, while ‘No Distraction’ pilfers more than a little from the sound of The Police. This continued switch and change of genres is perhaps due to the long gestation period of the recording, but it does at times give a schizophrenic feeling with each track jostling for attention rather than setting on a consistent mood. Taken individually though, the hit quantity far outweighs the miss. ‘Wow’ updates ‘Loser’ for the modern age with the same sense of humour and nonsensical lines, while early single ‘Dreams’ is joined by ‘Up All Night’ as examples of flawlessly executed pop-rock at its best.

Underneath the bright pop sheen, the album at times has an existential crisis at its heart however. ‘Seventh Heaven’ seeks an escape from the world (“Don’t tell nobody I’m here”) while ‘Dear Life’ proclaims “Dear life, I’m holding on/how long must I wait before the thrill is gone?” Meanwhile, ‘No Distractions’ speaks to the modern world and all its technological temptations with: “Pull you to the left, pull you to the right, pull you in all directions”. Beck may be embracing the modern world sonically, but it’s apparent that he is still wary of it in his personal life.

Ultimately, Colors is a great collection of tracks – it is deliberately and definitively different to anything that he has done before, and should be treated as such. It’s hard to think of how else he could have followed up Morning Phase. Repeat the trick, and he would have been criticised for settling on a formula. Some of Kurstin’s shine and polish has chipped a bit too much of his rougher edges away, and has perhaps instead left an album to like in the short term rather than love for the long term.

Jamie MacMillan

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