★★★★★ Beyoncé worked with so many people on ‘Lemonade’, her sixth album which she dropped in late April with an accompanying short fi lm, that its credits run to 3,105 words. It’s a testament to her star power that none of her collaborators blabbed before the surprise album release – Bey’s second in a row after her 2013 self-titled LP. But it’s also a testament to her star quality that despite the many, many cooks in this kitchen, ‘Lemonade’ feels like an album only Beyoncé could make. ‘Lemonade’ is officially billed as ‘a conceptual project based on every woman’s journey of self knowledge and healing’, but the narrative is really one of marital infi delity. ‘How did it come down to this? Going through your call list,’ she sings on the deceptively breezy reggae bounce of ‘Hold Up’, before issuing what sounds like an ultimatum on the brilliant, Jack White-assisted rock stomper ‘Don’t Hurt Yourself’: ‘If you try this shit again / You gon’ lose your wife.’ The electro blips of ‘Sorry’ feature another killer couplet: ‘He only want me when I’m not there / He better call Becky with the good hair.’ Beyoncé stops short of singing ‘My sister Solange appeared to attack you in a lift after the Met Gala in 2014’, but this is still startling stuff which must be tough for Jay Z (who appears in the short film) to listen to. As the story progresses from rage to reconciliation, ‘Lemonade’ continues to thrill musically. Bey teams with The Weeknd for ‘6 Inch’, a kind of strip club update of
If we rated albums with togs rather than stars, 'Morning Phase' would be a 15. Warm, expansive, richly textured and thick with shimmering vocal reverb, the twelfth album from Beck Hansen is the spiritual successor to 2003's 'Sea Change' - on which the 'Loser' author washed slacker irony and two-turntables-and-a-microphone skip hop aside with the first folky strum and sincere, heartbroken couplet.
'Morning Phase' is also the most anticipated leftfield album of 2014, following a six-year gap in which Beck has done everything (including overcoming spinal injury and confounding the download generation with a book of sheet music) except release an album. A 12-song cycle set in the tender, uncertain hours of dawn, it bathes in the '70s West Coast vibe of Beck's youth, with dew-spangled guitars and psychedelic melodies slowly turning their crumpled faces to the sun.
'Wave' swells with sensuous unease, like Scott Walker covering Bjork. With Beck's majestically weary tenor at full-bloom, single 'Blue Moon' has the emotional lift of Duran Duran's 'Ordinary Girl'. Swaddled in self-production, 'Morning Phase' is an absorbing and moving mood album. But if the other Beck record pegged for a 2014 release turns out to be a lo-fi beatbox-blues slap round the face called 'Wake-Up Call'? All to the good.