Beck's New Album: Morning Phase

It has been about six years since alternative rock musician Beck Hansen, more popularly known as simply "Beck", has issued a new album.  Finally, he's got one out now, titled Morning Phase.  Being a big fan of his music, I promptly went out and bought it.  As with his previous works, this new album has its own special personality.

The songs on Morning Phase are much slower in tempo than the typical Beck album, hearkening back to his equally-slow Sea Change from 2002.  But that album was marked by the melancholy tone of its songs; Morning Phase is much more positive (and a little more mysterious).  Still, I found myself gravitating to the more fast-paced tracks (which would have been "slow" on almost all of his other albums).  With this in mind I found myself most drawn to tracks 3, 5, 9, and 11, titled Heart is a Drum, Blue Moon, Blackbird Chain, and Turn Away, respectively.  Of these my favorite is Blackbird Chain...so much my favorite that I now regard it as my personal "song of the year" so far for 2014.  But having stated my favorites from Morning Phase, I must emphasize that the entire album is very listenable...but you need to understand this along with the acceptance that this is a different kind of Beck album than the ones that produced past hits like Loser, Where It's At, or Think I'm in Love.  I'm sure that this talented artist will speed things up a bit on his next release...I'm just happy to see him out there with something new.  And it's good, maybe one of his best...