Happy 20th Anniversary to Beck’s eighth studio album Sea Change, originally released September 24, 2002.
One of the great things about being a fan of Beck’s illustrious career is you never quite know where Mr. Hansen will take you next. From his debut album Golden Feelings (1993) through to his most recent LP Hyperspace (2019), Beck has been one to follow his muse, even when it bucked with convention or looked to derail commercial momentum.
In 2002, Beck released a follow-up to his musically adventurous and genre-shifting Midnite Vultures (1999) album that took a decidedly left turn and abandoned fuzz toned marshal stacks and synth beds for a rawer, stripped back expression. The result was the melancholic Sea Change that saw Beck lean into his singer-songwriter balladry with an emotional letting that reclines into a swirl of acoustic tunes and folk rock.
Bearing his heart and soul after the sudden breakup of a nine-year relationship, Beck delves heavily into themes of loneliness, sadness, anguish, and heartbreak. At times nerve raw and other times hopelessly resigned, Sea Change is a journey of endings and reflection.
Wading into the melancholy and allowing it to carry him, Beck delivers some of his finest moments on record with tracks like album opener “The Golden Age” that ebbs and flows with a sense of calm supporting you as lush melodies comfort amidst the swell. Whining steel guitars slide like glistening ripples across the surface of the track as the strumming of acoustic guitars act as a constant. Production by Nigel Godrich keeps the track, and the album in general, intriguing and utterly compelling without ever over playing the hand.
Stripped bare songs like “Paper Tiger” and “Round the Bend” are complemented by twisting and turning strings and orchestral arrangements by his father, David Campbell, that elevate them, ratcheting up a sense of tension within the raw emotions of the tracks that makes them almost foreboding.
Beck embraces the intimacy of confessional exposition in tracks like “End of the Day,” the reintroduction of “It’s All in Your Mind,” and the stirring “Already Dead”—which cribs a little from Blind Melon’s “No Rain”—that laments the evaporation of love.
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Even on tracks that don’t elicit the same sense of compelling connection with the listener, like “Side of the Road,” “Little One,” and “Sunday Sun,” you don’t begrudge the exploration of the emotional workout that sometimes drifts into cacophony, for you feel it still reflects the inner turmoil being exorcized. For when the soul-baring works, it moves in such unexpected ways.
“Lonesome Tears” is an astral travelling tune that leaves the body, floats towards the heavens and drifts into the silence of space with every passing bar. As if with every tear falling in an empty room, the clouds of depression are lifting, and this cathartic exchange is ultimately freeing.
This jettisoning of pain and regret brings with it a renewed lightness present on the blissful ringing of “Lost Cause.” The resignation in Beck’s lower register trembles as he wavers, “I’m tired of fighting / fighting for a lost cause,” as he closes the chapter and lets go of promises lost. There’s a strange sense of contentment present in the looping melody that gives hints that everything will be okay.
This feeling carries over to optimism—perhaps tinged with self-delusion—in the yearning of “Guess I’m Doing Fine,” when a bright dot in the distance promises light at the end of an emotionally devastating tunnel. The track pulls you through, not overpromising, not underdelivering, in the belief that indeed life will go on, and painful endings often clear a path for renewal in the self and the hope held in something better just a little on down the line.
For all its feelings of regret, resignation, and remorse, Sea Change is a remarkably comforting album, one that wallows without shame. And there’s something beautiful in that.
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