Drums echo suddenly on "Run Away," like the sound of something sacred shattering in an otherwise silent canyon, perfectly underscoring Beck's lyrics about crossing a Rubicon and there being "nothing left to say on desolation day." It's the best of many powerful moments on the veteran singer-songwriter's new LP Ride Lonesome. Its pitch-perfect production can be attributed in part to the frequent one-take sessions Beck and his band recorded at United Studio's Room B, whose acoustics are famed for excellent percussion on albums by the likes of Frank Sinatra, Adele and Paul McCartney. But the band would've sounded great anywhere. Indeed, fans will fawn over Beck reuniting with Joey Waronker (drums), Justin Meldal-Johnsen (bass), Smokey Hormel (acoustic guitar), Roger Joseph Manning Jr. (piano) and Jason Falkner (electric guitar), all of whom played on his acclaimed 2002 and 2014 records, Sea Change and Morning Phase. Beck is calling Ride Lonesome a spiritual sequel to those albums — and that's not only reflected in the singer-songwriter style music, which is a stark departure from the chameleonic musician's pop-leaning, Pharrell-produced 2017 LP Colors or the trip-hop of 2006's The Information. The lyrics are once again sincere and sound wrung out by heartache (none of the cheekiness of "Loser" is to be found here), fitting instrumentals that have progressed throughout this trilogy from Sea Change's stripped-back singer-songwriter vibe and Morning Phase's hazily atmospheric, coffee shop-ready troubadour-dom, now to frequent full-on country. On Ride Lonesome key track "Disappearing Act," for instance, a steel guitar riff unspools in a burst, before strings swoop in to soothe as Beck sings about a road up ahead leading to nowhere. Twangy guitars drone on closing tracks "If You Don't Know What Love Is" and "Beyond the Light." Meanwhile, the title track is a forlorn ode to soldiering on, making plain the Hank Williams influence Beck mentioned during a recent interview with Exclaim! And yet, other Ride Lonesome songs subvert genre in engrossing ways. Fans who loved the string-slathered Sea Change highlight "Paper Tiger" will be delighted by the violin, viola and cellos performed by 14 session musicians on front-end track "In the Night." Their string work gives the song a retro-sounding dramatic turn, underscoring the wee-hour eeriness of the song's lyrical tone. Beck also recently said that the overlaid pianos of "Failed Words" were inspired by John Lennon's ballads — and he succeeds in that regard, to the point of wringing tears from listeners with each mounting plink of keys in the song's closing moments. The studio becomes an instrument itself on offerings like "Beyond the Light," where lyrics such as "shiver to my soul" echo as if Beck's singing at the bottom of a well. Thanks to those elements and more, Ride Lonesome doesn't just serve as a fitting end of a trilogy: it's moving and inventive enough to make fans pine for the next instalment in what is is hopefully a long series.