Beck was my result for Buzzfeed’s “Which ’90s Alt-Rock Dude Are You?” quiz, so I feel uniquely qualified to evaluate his new album. Who else—aside from perhaps all the other respondents who also have the same taste in off-brand Dr. Pepper—can provide insights into the record of someone who is clearly a kindred spirit?

Perhaps I, er, Beck—though I guess we’re pretty much the same person—should take offense to being lumped into the ’90s. Granted, you have to be at a comfortable point in your career when you can do conceptual releases like 2012’s Song Reader, which wasn’t really a record as it was released only as sheet music. Yet Beck’s always marched to the beat of his own drum. Morning Phase (Capitol Records), which he has been describing as the companion piece to 2002’s Sea Change, shows that just because he’s matured from the quirky “Loser” of 1994 and the funkified Midnight Vulture of the late ’90s doesn’t mean we should relegate his relevance to a Buzzfeed pop culture quiz answer quite yet.

Sea Change was a melancholy post-breakup record, so Morning Phase is the evolutionary next step, a self-reflective album that’s perhaps a little more hopeful. After all, you can’t have an end without a new beginning, something conveyed with songs like “Cycle” and “Heart Is a Drum.” Yet there’s a sense of isolation throughout the record—not only in the lyrics, but in the music as well, thanks, in part, to string arrangements by Beck’s father, David Campbell, who somehow makes the individual instruments within an orchestra sound lonely.

For all the sad subjects on the record, there are a few musical twists, such as the ’60s melodies of “Turn Away,” the folksy “Blackbird Chain” and the country ballad called, appropriately, ”Country Down.” But what stand out on Morning Phase are the hauntingly beautiful tracks. On “Wave,” the vocals soar and retreat as they echo the song’s title, Beck repeating the word “isolation,” dipping and rising. He opens “Blue Moon” with the assertion, “I’m so tired of being alone.” Beck obviously wrote this record before he saw on Facebook how many people got him as a quiz result. You’re not alone, Beck, not as long as people like tacos or whatever snack food decided we’re alike.