Help!

Beck's new album, Morning Phase, is so beautiful I can't stop listening to it. Every time I put it on I have to stop everything to hear it in its entirety. And I always feel like putting it on.

I got it last Wednesday, the day after it came out, expecting greatness. It had been compared everywhere to Sea Change, my (previously) favourite album of Beck's. The New Yorker reviewer said he'd listened to it fifty times and couldn't find anything wrong with it. Beck hadn't released a solo record in about six years, but everything he'd touched as a producer in the interim had been gorgeous and mind-expanding.

However, having waited excitedly for months to hear this record, I guess I figured there'd also be some disappointment I should be prepared for. Well, there hasn't been. Instead, I just keep getting carried away (like in the lyrics to "Wave," the album's midpoint atmospheric shiver-inducer) by a reverie of lush emotion. It's sad. It's triumphant. It's ultimately very, very wise about being oneself in a complex world. Your rational mind will be knocked out by the simplicity of Beck's lyrics while the music overwhelms your heart, convincing it of their import. I can only compare the feeling to the first time I ever heard a Nick Drake record and realized music held possibilities more beautiful than I'd ever imagined.

I recommend listening to Morning Phase on headphones two or three times in a row for the full effect. Maybe not at work, though, as you won't be getting much done while the ecstatic trance lasts. On the other hand, once you've allowed yourself to be taken over by it, you might feel more aware that your work is something worth doing.

"We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time.

"When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world, and often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness which, if not put down, diminishes our chances of joy.

"It's like wearing gloves every time we touch something, and then, forgetting we chose to put them on, we complain that nothing feels quite real. Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being, soft and unrepeatable."

—Mark Nepo