For Gen X rockers, growing old remains an insurmountable existential challenge. Consider the avalanche of legacy-defiling reunion tours (stop Pixies and Smashing Pumpkins, just stop!) and the sad fade-outs (did you even know that Pearl Jam put out an LP last year?). Between a rock and a sad place, it seemed Beck Hanson – uber-slacker and hipster – had found a third, more dignified way. He stepped back and let the world sort of... forget.

That, at least, appeared to be his entirely understandable response to the underperformance of his last few records (2008’s Modern Guilt wasn’t so much released for public consumption as jettisoned from an airlock). Bunkering down in his Malibu studio, he embarked on a second career as a kind of alt. culture sage, an oracle to whom musicians passing through Los Angeles offered homage. The apotheosis of this laser-focused quirkiness was his Record Club project, whereby friends and kindred spirits would drop by and, over 24 hours, cover a favourite album. Devendra Banhart and MGMT helped re-imagine Songs Of Leonard Cohen, St Vincent and Liars chipped in on his generously revisionist tilt at INXS’ Kick. By every indicator, he was enjoying the most blissful of retirements.

The sense that Beck isn’t ready to return to the frontline of the indie wars doesn’t exactly dissipate when you slap on Modern Phase, his 12th studio LP (discounting Song Reader, a 2012 collection presented in sheet-music form). Trumpeted by his record label as a spiritual sequel to 2002’s wistful Sea Change, the new collection is understated and mindful how it goes. A project that sometimes seems fearful of raising its voice, as if someone were sleeping in the adjoining room, Modern Phase’s default setting is an intense moochiness. At times the melancholy sluices so high you fear Beck may lose his footing and slip beneath the water-line.

Adrift without a life-raft, Beck is in straight-ahead confessional mode. His voice a gentle coo, on ‘Heart Is A Drum’ and ‘Say Goodbye’ he is overshadowed by shuffling country-folk arrangements (the project began in Nashville, only to be canned for several years as Beck tried to figure what he wanted from it). We plunge deeper down the sinkhole on recent single ‘Blue Moon’, which dances to a sorrowful sway while spilling its sad lyrics – “Lies you tried to hide/ Behind your eyes/ Don’t leave me on my own.”

Recorded with the same ensemble that assisted on Sea Change, more than anything the album reminds us that, though lionised for his folk/hip hop/indie mash-ups, it’s as a balladeer that Beck lowers his guard and lets his talent shine most brightly. ‘Devil’s Haircut’ and ‘Where It’s At’ lit up the indie discos – and yet any Beck diehard will tell you ‘Jackass’ was hands-down the highlight of Odelay, his break-out from 1996. Speaking to Hot Press in 2005, Beck intimated that he was fed-up with his billing as a ‘90s alt.rock posterboy. The slightly gimmicky cross-over tunes were something he could crank out at will, he explained. Clearly he believed his true talents lay elsewhere. Morning Phase suggests he was right all along.