Beck tells us about ‘Ride Lonesome’: “It took a long time to get that kind of courage to be this direct and emotional”

Beck has spoken to NME about tapping into a certain spiritual and emotional realm for his new album ‘Ride Lonesome’, as well as his often misunderstood genre-hopping musical journey to here from the ’90s. We met Beck in a studio space at his label’s London offices where he was lucid but admittedly “in jet lag mode, man” – quite fitting to talk about his beautiful new album ‘Ride Lonesome’, which he described as a “slow motion, twilight, Mojave, acoustic, a trance of sound and emotion” It’s been seven long years since his previous album ‘Hyperspace‘, but it’s not as if the singer, songwriter and composer has been resting on laurels. As well as the enforced stop-gap of COVID and lockdowns, he’s gone out on several world tours – including his acclaimed orchestral theatre run last year – as well as labouring on the songs that would go on to make up ‘Ride Lonesome’ with gruelling attention to detail. “In another era, it probably would have come out a year and a half ago,” he told NME. “I was initially going to finish this record and have it come out in 2023, but I ended up shelving it for two years. I wasn’t sure about the songs, I didn’t think they were strong enough, and I just wasn’t...