Ten contemplative songs from the much-travelled Brooklyn singer-songwriter
WC Beck is an itinerant singer/songwriter originally from Kansas who calls Brooklyn, NY home after long stints in Portland and Paris. While living in Portland, Beck made a name for himself as a multi-instrumentalist in several bands and as a session musician. He played in bands including Blue Giant, Bobby Bare, Jr., Quiet Life, The Portland Country Underground, among others. After moving to Brooklyn in 2015, Beck was a member of bands Monteagle and Swimming Bell.
Beck first set out to record some demos for a new album and recorded them with Justin Wilcox in his apartment studio, along with all of the core guitar and vocal tracks that became “Facecomber”. The album was originally recorded for a 2020 release, but the pandemic got in the way. Subsequently Beck revisited the songs and the final version – judging by the tags on the data files – was completed in the summer of 2021. Beck describes the album as “one of the most personal, introspective albums I’ve released and since it was an album that I wrote and sang all the parts on, it took a long time and is essentially thousands of little conversations with myself over nearly a decade”.
Surprisingly for a record with this genealogy, it makes a coherent whole although the patchwork process of putting it together leaves it sounding very much a like a studio record. The opening track ‘A Letter From A Friend’ uses the letter as a vehicle through which Beck revisits and contemplates his musical and personal journey from Kansas to where and who he is today. It washes in on a series of effects before the acoustic guitar sets up the melody and Beck sets the scene “A letter from a friend, reminded me again, of all the people I’ve been, of all the places I’ve lived”. The song is laced with some delicate electric guitar from the middle to the end when it drops into the same effects; after which Beck counts in the bluesy ‘The River’. The song muses on life and nature with Beck joined on the refrain by choral harmonies.
The title track is the centrepiece of the first side. A gentle country waltz kicking off with just Beck’s voice and acoustic guitar before electric guitar and keyboards join in along with backing harmonies. The song is one of encouragement to a person struggling with ageing – “And you comb your thinning hair, but you can’t comb your face” – to whom Beck offers comfort and support. ‘Turn To Fall’ introduces a pedal steel to the instrumentation, adding an element of wistfulness to Beck’s tale of regret. Side 1 closer “To Have It All” opens with piano and voices which fade as acoustic guitar and violin underpin a mournful vocal as Beck relates the decline of a relationship.
Side 2 opener ‘Hummingbird’ has a country feel enhanced by the brushed percussion and a thoughful lyric with its plaintive chorus “Oh hummingbird, don’t you take the sun away”. Another bluesy song with handclaps, ‘10:19 Train’ gets to the good old-fashioned theme of the narrator’s woman having run off with someone else, including a nod to Bobby Womack. The slide guitar adds to the down-home feel. ‘Night Morn Midday’ starts in a folkie vein with Beck mourning the sorrow of parting from a loved one. The song develops into a consideration of America physically and spiritually and eventually the singer’s thoughts on reaching middle age. The lead vocal is framed with some nice harmonies. Beck continues looking back at life in ‘A Cabin Of Time’, framed with piano and guitar.
The album’s closing track, ‘Crystal Creek’, sees Beck in wistful mode thinking of the past: ”I come from the place the world forgot, A Plainsman in a plain land” and looking forward to a final resting place “in the tall trees and sweet breezes there”. A lonesome harmonica emphasises the mood of the tune.
“Facecomber” is a mature reflective album with a set of songs to the point with the instrumentation providing a fine setting for Beck’s lyrics.
