Beck returns with a wacky new hip-hop track, ‘Wow’

Has sad, sensitive Beck left the building?

It was easy to wonder that last year when the singer put out “Dreams,� an up-tempo guitar-pop tune, only months after his lush bummer-folk record “Morning Phase� won a Grammy Award for album of the year.

Now the shift appears definite with Thursday’s release of “Wow,� a wacky new rap track in which Beck rhymes “standing on your lawn doing jiu-jitsu� with “girl in a bikini with the Lamborghini shih tzu.�

Built around a clattering hip-hop beat and a tinny slide-whistle lick, “Wow� recalls the mischievous found-sound approach Beck improbably brought to a mainstream audience 20 years ago with his left-field smash “Odelay.� (The song also shares something with Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot.�)

And it’s not the only fresh indication that Beck is giving at least a temporary rest to his acoustic-troubadour act.

There’s also “Tiny Cities,� a slick collaboration with the Australian EDM star Flume from the latter’s new album, “Skin,� which came out Friday.

Add in Beck’s appearance on the Michael McDonald-ish “Time Wind,� from M83’s recent “Junk,� and the mournful strummer of “Morning Phase� starts to seem as distant as the merry prankster of “Odelay� did when Beck made his first sad-dude statement with 2002’s “Sea Change.�

Twitter: @mikaelwood