Beck Looks Forward With "Ride Lonesome", the First New Album in the Definitive Sound Series

It is always exciting when Beck releases a new album.

I still have a very specific Beck memory from 1996. My good buddy Brian and I were driving to Washington, D.C., and somewhere in Georgetown we found a record store tucked away on the second floor of a building. On one of the shelves was a 12-inch single of “Where It’s At.”

Naturally, I bought it.

The record I purchased in Georgetown all those years ago...

Beck then provided the soundtrack (on CD in the car, of course) as Brian and I proceeded to get ourselves spectacularly turned around, circling the Beltway far more times than was necessary. We eventually found our way, and Beck kept us company throughout; for that we remain in his debt.

So the arrival of a new Beck album is always welcome news around here. But Ride Lonesome, due September 18 through Capitol Records, comes with an additional wrinkle: it will be the first brand-new studio album released as part of Interscope-Capitol’s Definitive Sound Series!

Until now, DSS has largely followed the traditional audiophile model, revisiting established albums and giving them premium mastering, pressing and packaging treatment. Beck has already appeared in the series with Morning Phase, his GRAMMY Album of the Year winner.

This time, however, they are not looking backward.

I’ve spoken with Tom “Grover” Biery (here and here) about the thinking behind the Definitive Sound Series and its attention to the complete vinyl chain, from source and mastering through plating and pressing. With Ride Lonesome, that same philosophy is being applied to a new recording from day one.

The DSS edition was mastered for vinyl by Levi Seitz at Black Belt Mastering from 24-bit/96kHz high-resolution original vinyl files and will be pressed at Record Technology, Inc. on 180-gram Neotech VR900-D2 vinyl. The edition uses the One Step process, eliminating intermediate plating stages in an effort to retain greater detail and immediacy from the source.

It will be limited to 3,000 numbered copies, each housed in a custom slipcase with a heavyweight tip-on jacket and certificate documenting the mastering, plating and pressing chain.

There is something refreshing about all of this: audiophile vinyl has historically been driven by hindsight. An album becomes important, beloved or collectible, and years later somebody returns to it with better mastering, quieter vinyl and more elaborate packaging.

Here, the audiophile edition is part of the album’s introduction.

Produced by Beck and mixed by longtime collaborator Nigel Godrich, Ride Lonesome is Beck’s first collection of entirely new material since 2019’s Hyperspace. Early descriptions place it in some of the same spacious, reflective territory as Sea Change and Morning Phase, with several musicians from those records returning.

That makes Beck an especially logical artist for this DSS experiment. His records have long balanced sonic curiosity with songwriting craft, and some of his quieter work has become particularly prized by listeners interested in sound quality.

But the larger significance may be what this says about DSS itself: premium vinyl cannot exist forever as an exercise in polishing the past. There are only so many times the industry can return to the same handful of canonical titles before audiophile culture begins to resemble a very expensive museum shop.

New records deserve serious treatment, too!

So kudos to DSS for looking forward and treating Ride Lonesome as worthy of that attention before history has had a chance to tell us what we are supposed to think about it. Maybe it becomes another Beck audiophile favorite. Maybe it takes us somewhere unexpected.

Either way, if you happen to get lost on the Beltway while listening, I can confirm that Beck makes excellent company.