Morning Phase

Beck produced it himself, recording it across 2012 and 2013. It reached number 3 in the United States and number 4 in the United Kingdom. At the 2015 Grammys it won Album of the Year, Best Rock Album and Best Engineered Album. Stanley Clarke played upright bass on Morning. It was billed as a companion piece to Sea Change, and almost every musician credited on Sea Change returned, with Godrich the one exception. Beck had started recording material in Nashville in 2005, left it unfinished, and in 2012 returned to the project at Third Man Records. Early in 2013 he recorded much of the album in Los Angeles in three days with Justin Meldal-Johnsen, Joey Waronker, Roger Joseph Manning Jr. and Smokey Hormel, and then spent six months working with the material. David Campbell wrote the orchestral arrangements. Blue Moon was the first single, on 20 January 2014, and Waking Light followed on 4 February. It debuted at number 3 on the Billboard 200 with more than 87,000 copies, his second best chart position after Guero, and holds a Metacritic score of 81 from 46 reviews. Beck performed Heart Is a Drum with Chris Martin at the Grammys. Pitchfork's Ryan Dombal found it close to Sea Change in style but safe, and noted that a batch of Sea Change style demo tapes had been lost. The Guardian ranked Wave fourth among Beck's songs.