Beck
Sea Change
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NATN Recommended
Beck
Sea Change
DGC, 2002
RiYL: Flaming Lips, Sean Lennon, Black Crowes' 'Wiser Time' |
The album follows Beck's breakup with his longtime girlfriend, and the guy does sound very sad. Opener "The Golden Age" sets the tone for the entire record with its set-your-troubles-free theme. "Put your hands on the wheel / let the golden age begin," Beck croons over a warm bed of futuristic country sounds, highlighted by a mournful pedal steel guitar. "Let the window down / feel the moonlight on your skin," he continues, evoking a late-night drive in the desert by a lonesome soul who's pondering nature's stark beauty as one of his few remaining reasons to live. "These days, I barely get by / I don't even try," goes the oft-quoted chorus.
But it's not that Sea Change is a depressing album. Its songs, for the most part, come from the viewpoint of a depressed person. But there is always a light of hope, a sort of glass-half-full mentality. The protagonist in "The Golden Age" is sad, but he does have the outlet of the desert road: "you gotta drive all night just to feel like your'e ok," he admits, but it doesn't appear like there's anything preventing him from doing just that.
Nigel Godrich once again joins Beck on the production front, and aids his crack band (former Jellyfish keyboardist Roger Manning, guitarist Smokey Hormel, drummer Joey Waronker, bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen) in creating the perfect sonic atmosphere for this batch of 12 tunes. The string-driven "Paper Tiger" with its processed vocals, bubbling bass lines and building tension, contrasts just enough with the spare lament "Guess I'm Doing Fine" to allow the two to sit contentedly next to each other. The latter features Beck at his most country, with the poignant tear-in-beer chorus "It's only lies that I'm livin' / It's only tears that I'm cryne / It's only you that I'm losing / I guess I'm doing fine."
OK, so 1998's Mutations was also built on down-tempo tunes and produced in two weeks with Nigel Godrich. But Sea Change is not Mutations 2. Whereas the former album was somewhat of a high-tech upgrade of the singer/songwriter-type material found on 1994's One Foot In The Grave, Sea Change is more of a piece, each song contributing in turn to an overall mood yet each clearly in its own musical space. Sea Change also, for the most part, is coming from a more direct, honest place. Instead of "the mynah birds cry in the shadows of sulphur / the trawlers drift by, they're chewing dried meat" (Mutations' "Lazy Flies"), we get fare more like "How could this love, ever turning, never turn its eye on me?" (from Sea Change's "Lonesome Tears").
Beck's clearly trying to convey something emotionally with the album, and it makes his elegantly crafted tunes sink in that much more. Though sparse mid-album dirges "Round The Bend" and "Already Dead" reach the nadir of the disc's depression, the almost-peppy classics "Sunday Sun" and "Little One" pull the listener back up and put Sea Change over the top on quality. "Sunday Sun" pulls harmonies and sleigh bells through an entrancing musical bed before derailing into unexpected waves of feedback in a glorious finale. The recovery-themed "Little One" contains probably the album's most memorable hook (in its wall-of-sound chorus) and propels the album in righteous fashion toward its appropriately spare closer, "Side Of The Road."
Sure, he's destined to move back into faux-soul Dust Brothers-inspired collage territory soon enough, but Beck's surprise revelation with Sea Change is that he can make lasting art in such a different format. The album just adds to his impressive resume, and bodes well for the future. But for Beck's sake, I hope that he doesn't have to experience another heartbreak the next time he wants to make another great album.
TROY CARPENTER | Troy Carpenter founded NATN from a Chicago apartment during the ambitious winter of 1998 with co-conspirators Ben French and Jonathan Cohen. After a five-year stint in New York, he and wife Lourdes have recently relocated to Indianapolis, where he spends days listening to music and nights in the kitchen at Elements restaurant. Musical heroes: Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Super Furry Animals. What else makes life worth living: Sushi, Phucty, runs in the park, and the Atlanta Braves.