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| 1. The 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 |
The music is deceptively simple and beautiful. The wackiness of Beck's previous efforts is gone and the blatant weirdness is replaced by an backward sincerity. Musically and lyrically, this album is very real. The music creates a soft bed upon which Beck's voice floats over, lands on, and sinks into. The vocal performance is in stark contrast to the "heartfelt" pop-vocal performances of today. Beck is whispering his sorrows in our collective ear, rather than screaming at us. It is a very bold and personal effort.
Sea Change, while not yet being called a concept album, seems to follow the appropriate rules for a concept album. The first song, "Golden Age" sets up the mood and the situation. "Put your hands on the wheel / Let the golden age begin / Let the window down / Feel the moonlight in your skin / Let the desert wind cool your aching head / Let the weight of the world drift away instead" Beck is welcoming us into his melancholy world, telling you to hold on, allow his sadness (moonlight) to touch you, and escape into his pain. Likewise, the song's instrumentation begins simply with an acoustic guitar and ends with a kind of electronic white noise.
The last song, "Side Of The Road", wraps up the journey by returning the listener to the road; the trip is over.
... Read more ›All sadness aside, Nigel Goodrich did an amazing production job on this album. Songs like "Already Dead" and "Side of the Road" are simple acoustic-guitar-driven affairs. At other times, with soaring string arrangements and cavernous vocal reverb, many of the songs have an epic quality ("Sunday Sun", "Lonesome Tears", etc).
This is, essentially, a Beck album without any moments of levity, which can make it quite a tough listen. But then again, if you've had a tough day, this might just be perfect for you. For first time purchasers of a Beck disc, start elsewhere. For Beck fans, however, this should be a welcome addition to the collection.