Beck Hansen really doesn’t believe a musician has the right to complain. It’s something of an occupational requirement.
“Nobody wants to hear it,” he says. “That’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to play music and have a good time.”
So it may come as a surprise to many fans that Hansen suffered a spinal injury that kept him from making music in the usual ways for a significant portion of the last decade. He doesn’t talk about it a lot and certainly doesn’t want to dwell. He found other ways to create as a producer and songwriter during this period, but he will admit he feels a great sense of release now that he’s putting out “Morning Phase,” just the second album he’s completed and released in the last 10 years.
“I was just waiting until I felt like I was able to do what I used to do,” the 43-year-old Hansen said. “There’s not anything particularly unique about it, but it’s something that I did learn from. It was a difficult experience, but in any kind of difficulty there are positives. And I think that’s particularly what the record is about: How to come out of some sort of travail and difficulty and find some sense of light again and life continuing. Once you’ve seen some things that are darker and you know that darkness is there, how do you embrace the other side of life?”
Beck’s embracing it with a period of great creativity and will soon return to the studio to record a second album he plans to release later this year. At times while injured he was unable to hold conventional instruments, turning to substitutes, like a hand-held keyboard to write and record. He’s returned to live performance over the last few years and feels he’s been transformed by the experience in ways he struggles to explain — as much metaphysical as physical.
“Morning Phase” really began in 2008 when Beck came to Nashville to record country-flavored songs that he ended up shelving because he didn’t feel the tone was correct at the time. He experienced a delay in his plans for a return to the studio, so he reformed the band he leaned on during his most creative period and attacked those Nashville songs from a different angle.
The result sounds very much in mood and color like “Sea Change,” the album that revealed Beck’s ability to filter deep emotion after playing the sly trickster for much of his early career.
“Even if I don’t see them for a number of years, when we get together it’s the same,” Hansen said of the band, which includes guitarist Smokey Hormel and drummer Joey Waronker. There’s part of us that’s worn and grown to fit together, you know, it’s part of how we play music. So it was really interesting putting that puzzle back together, how well it fit.”
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