Track Listing

1. Golden Age
2. Paper Tiger
3. Guess I'm Doing Fine
4. Lonesome Tears
5. Lost Cause
6. End Of The Day
7. It's All In Your MInd
8. Round The Bend
9. Already Dead
10. Sunday Sun
11. Little One
12. Side Of The Road

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #209475 in Music
• Released on: 2003-12-15
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Enhanced, Import
• Original language: English

CD Description
Though 1998's MUTATIONS was the closest Beck had come at the time to conventional (read: non-ironic) troubadourisms, hequickly declared the album a detour and swiftly followed itup with the Prince-influenced about-face of MIDNITE VULTURES. It comes as something of a surprise, then, that he shouldfocus his subsequent efforts on an unprecedentedly earnest singer-songwriter album like SEA CHANGE, which finds him purposefully peeling away his multiple levels of irony. Trumpeted in the press as a post-breakup album, SEA CHANGE has beencalled Beck's BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, and it's true that he'd never been anywhere near this emotionally naked before.
Sonically, he seems to have (at least momentarily) laid asidehis R&B/hip-hop aspirations in pursuit of a late-'60s/early-'70s folk-rock aesthetic. Several cuts have a lazy, Gram Parsons-like country-rock tinge. On "Round the Bend", he delivers a moody, string-swathed lament obviously modelled on Nick Drake's "River Man". While some might lament the departureof the word-spinning wiseguy, SEA CHANGE still seems an inevitable and important step in Beck's artistic maturation.

Customer Reviews

Not Blood on the Tracks, but in a good way...
Sea Change is the sound of a an artist maturing without losing sight of what made him special in the first place. Neither does Beck attempt to merely repeat what he has recorded in the past. Instead, over a mellow background of rich acoustic guitars, looped drums (which sound crisp and real - I cannot listen to Prince, due to the God-awful drum sounds on his "classic" records - I'm that bothered) and genuinely original sounding string sections (no can't really be bothered, Oasis-esque strings here), Beck sings with soul, but without beating his chest or bleeding heart whingeing.

The DVD-A is, frankly, worth having for the 5.1 mix alone. Not so adventurous or mind-boggling as The Flaming Lips' "Yoshimi..." DVD, this doesn't so much leap around and beat you into submission - not necessarily a bad thing - as immerse the listener within it.

It's not always a particularly uplifting place to be, mind. However, as I say this is no Blood On The Tracks as has been stated in several places. Not to my ears, anyway. Sea Change doesn't have anything as full of bile as, say, Idiot Wind, nor as trite as Jack and The King...There are greater traces of Nick Drake to my mind - a wholly gentler and consequently sadder frame of mind.

So, in short - an understated triumph which was probably never going to be hailed from the rooftops in the same way that any Nick Drake albums aren't going to be, either (Don't get me wrong, if anyone gets 5* reviews, it's Nick Drake) - Perhaps too gentle for today's rough old world, Sea Change is nonetheless a great treasure for those who i) want great sound, and ii) like their pleasures a bit more subtle.