Beck on Ride Lonesome: a shelved heartbreak record, his old band, and a preference for human effort

Built from Beck's published interviews with NME (15 September 2026) and Exclaim! (17 September 2026), plus coverage by NME, Consequence, Stereogum and his official site. Sumo38 did not interview him. Quotes are his, as printed in those interviews.

Beck released Ride Lonesome on 18 September through Capitol: his 15th album and his first studio record since Hyperspace in 2019. It brings back the musicians who played on Sea Change and Morning Phase, Smokey Hormel, Joey Waronker, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Roger Joseph Manning Jr. and Jason Falkner, with Nigel Godrich mixing. NME's review called it "a drop-dead gorgeous meditation on heartache and solitude." In interviews around the release, Beck has been unusually open about why it took so long.

A record he almost didn't release

The album was meant to come out in 2023. "I ended up shelving it for two years," he told NME, because he wasn't sure the songs were strong enough. Much of it was written during the pandemic, when he was at home on his own, and he doesn't hide what it is about: "It's kind of a heartbreak record. It's pretty obvious!" The losses it covers are romantic, but also a good friend, and the end of whole eras of life.

He describes the sound in a run of images: "slow motion, twilight, Mojave, acoustic, a trance of sound and emotion."

The courage to be direct

Beck told NME that the 1990s were hostile to quiet, sincere music. He remembers being booed for strumming something elegiac, and worrying for friends like Elliott Smith and Lou Barlow. Back then, throwing genres together felt to him like "almost a sort of post-modern punk rock." Making something this plain took time: "It took a long time to get that kind of courage to be this direct and emotional."

His own Wrecking Crew

He calls this band his version of the Wrecking Crew, the famous Los Angeles session players. "There's a musical chemistry that's something gratifying for us," he said. Speaking to Exclaim!, he explained that they recorded in Room B at United Studios in Hollywood, cutting some songs in one take while others, like "Slow Canyon", needed more work; he played much of the piano on "Failed Words" himself. Some of it is as simple as an acoustic guitar: "There's also just something special about when I take my Martin D-28 and strum an E chord." His approach to writing is patient, sometimes all night: "a song kind of knows what it wants to be. You just have to be patient."

On AI

Asked about AI, he told NME he has nothing against beats made on a laptop, but "I just prefer more of a human effort." Over the past decade he has been drawn more and more to orchestras.

The tour

The live show is meant to match the record. "It's going to be slow and dark with a quality of otherness and remoteness," he said, closer to a Robert Wilson theatre production than a rock concert. The North American tour got off to a delayed start: the first three shows were moved "due to production issues" to 8 to 10 November, with the Woodinville date relocated to Benaroya Hall in Seattle, so it opened at the Santa Barbara Bowl on 22 September instead. Red Rocks was set for 1 October, followed by Massey Hall in Toronto on 14 and 15 October, Brooklyn Paramount on 22 and 23 October and Nashville on 31 October.