Beck Reunites Sea Change Band on New Album
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- Beck is releasing his first album in seven years — since 2019's Hyperspace — recorded with the same 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 on mixing.
- Beck said the reunion reflects how "the playing and the chemistry had evolved and deepened" over decades of collaboration; the band first came together for 1998's Mutations.
- Two preview tracks are already out — "Ride Lonesome," described as a "wise, almost cosmic ode to keepin' on keepin' on," and the "serene, fingerpicked" "In the Night."
- Denis Lavant, star of Claire Denis's Beau Travail, appears in the music video for "In the Night."
- The Guardian is running a reader interview with Beck; submissions close at 10am BST on 25 August 2026.
- "Ride Lonesome" is released as a single via Iliad/Capitol on 18 September.
Why it matters: Beck recruiting the band behind the 'melancholy classics' Sea Change and Morning Phase — rather than the Dust Brothers or Hypersage collaborators — points to an introspective, folk-rock direction for the record. The Guardian's reader Q&A gives fans a direct line to one of rock's most shape-shifting catalog artists at a moment of rare new output.
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