POLL: Beck, Sea Change

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZDDDFNHApI

this is totally "sunday sun"

Oh I didn't know it was a Gainsbourg record. Great song indeed.

no wait, it's "little one"

yeah, i don't like any of the songs, but godrich's production on that one is great

kind of funny to read my 2002 review of this record. some terrible writing aside, i think i agree with it. hadn't heard melodie nelson at the time:

For a guy who began his career with a song that had one-hit-wonder written all over it, Beck has proved to be a surprisingly durable fixture in the ever-fickle pop music landscape. By nature, he seems wholly uninterested in repeating his past successes; instead, he's crafted an adventurous and varied body of work over the past eight years, proving himself a master of innumerable musical genres and a songwriter of considerable talent. Originally pegged as the quintessential underachiever, Beck has become one of the more ambitious artists working in popular music today.

Beck's latest release, the somber Sea Change, seeks to establish Mr. Hansen as a "serious" songwriter, as someone in league with heavy hitters like Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan or Nick Drake— guys who write about Serious Shit, that is. Gone are the faux r&b pastiches of Midnite Vultures and the cut and paste experimentalism of Odelay. Also gone is the surrealistic wordplay that marked even his other stripped-down affairs, One Foot In The Grave and Mutations.

What we're left with is Beck lamenting a broken heart, his acoustic guitar and world-weary voice front and center. "There's too many people you used to know," he sings on "Lost Cause." "They see you coming, they see you go." Much of the album is like this—a clear-eyed, first person report on the end of a relationship. In other words, we're a long way from the oversexed, super-funky streets of Glendale. Sorry, Debra.

Ultimately, Sea Change is a hit-and-miss affair. Beck, as usual, has done his homework: the songs here echo the best of the early '70s singer/songwriter boom. Cohen, Dylan and Drake are the most obvious touchstones, and references to Gordon Lightfoot, John Martyn and Neil Young show up as well. Beck's band, the same group of musicians who have backed him on his past two albums (the wildly disparate Mutations and Midnite Vultures), again proves itself to be a remarkably versatile and sensitive unit. Producer Nigel Godrich (best known for his work with Radiohead) gives the album a shimmering, reverb-laden sound that improves upon Mutations' slightly flat production.

But Godrich's production and the band's tasteful renderings of Beck's songs are also responsible for the album's essential flaw. Listening to the album, you're drawn more to the sonic craftsmanship at work, rather than the songs themselves. You're thinking, "Wow, what a great mix of glockenspiel and pedal steel guitar," rather than emotionally responding to the pathos apparent in Beck's lyrics. As a result, the album's central focus—the death of a love affair—is obscured considerably.

It's almost as though Beck is trying to cloak some of the rawer, more personal elements in the songs. It wouldn't be an unprecedented move. Dylan himself re-recorded much of his own broken-hearted masterpiece Blood On The Tracks in order to smooth over some of the rough edges that might have cut a little too close to the bone on the original version of the album. It's certainly the artist's right to edit and alter his own work, but in Beck's case, the beautiful but often overwhelming production of Sea Change may have cost him a better album.

In the end, the listener is left with is an undeniably gorgeous sounding record, with several excellent songs. It's not in league with the great singer/songwriter records of the '60s and '70s, but it is another fascinating episode in Beck's career. He's one of the few mainstream artists who's completely willing to eschew commercialism in order to follow wherever his muse takes him. Beck doesn't paint his masterpiece with Sea Change, but he's undoubtedly on the right track.

There's too many people you used to know
They see you coming, they see you go
They know your secrets and you know theirs
This town is crazy; nobody cares

really nails how it feels living in small cities sometimes imho.

calling Miranda Lambert!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

who's Miranda Lambert?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xjy6EuMPGA

Interesting results. It was a decent enough album but the only song that stuck with me over the years was Paper Tiger

and Sunday Sun was my close second but I can't remember how it goes

Already Dead was robbed. beautiful album.

Surprised "Nobody's Fault" isn't on this album.

lol cosign

i kinda feel like "Nobody's Fault But My Own" should be on this album, and if it were, it would be the best song on it imho

i haven't played it in several years either, but at the time i was in the midst of a mopey decade so i was cool with the vibe!

― IT IS EXECUTION (Z S), Monday, August 29, 2011 10:14 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha same here - it's also the perfect morning hangover soundtrack

― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Monday, August 29, 2011 10:43 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban

^^

"round the bend" is a stunning track imo

Round the Bend is pretty great as River Man ripoffs go

― B-Boy Bualadh Bos (ecuador_with_a_c), Sunday, August 28, 2011 11:57 AM (eight years ago) bookmarkflaglink

comparison is apt, tho "round the bend" is more languid

if you cut like four songs from this record it would be astonishing

They're all good imho. I never understood this album's bad rep.

my problem with it is it's so one-note for so long it's a little like walking through mud

the songs are all basically good though, you're right

That's fair, I guess I've always had an inordinately high tolerance for that kind of quagmire.

They're all good imho. I never understood this album's bad rep.

― coco vide (pomenitul), Friday, March 27, 2020 10:19 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

none of the songs bang is the problem and the lane of prettiness it occupies is not everyone's cup of tea, i get it. also a lot of the songs have obvious points of comparison. its not a genre exercise so much as it is a tribute album with immaculate production.

It's derivative, no doubt about it, but that didn't bother me when I first heard it at the ripe age of 17, with little to no awareness of its touchstones.

same (we are abt the same age then, i was 16 when this came out)

I may have actually decided to check out Histoire de Melody Nelson after hearing this, and while the comparison became obvious afterwards, it only added to my enjoyment. Then again, I haven't revisited Sea Change in years, so who knows how I'd respond to it now.

paper tiger is still good and makes me feel less shitty than listening to gainsbourg

"Round the Bend" & "Side of the Road" tower above the rest on this album imo. Most of the rest would be lot better if the arrangements would get out of way of the songs. A stripped down de-Godriched version of this in the style of the de-Spectored Let It Be would be amazing.

no actually it wd be bad, there isnt a lot going on in these songs without the production ime

after the 3rd or 4th song with that same tinkly synth sound my eyes glaze over, wld much rather hear becks guitar playing most of the time

Paper Tiger and Lonesome Tears are both really good, for different reasons. In my deep madness of Beck superfandom I bought the Japanese import CD, and "Ship In the Bottle" is a pretty good song too. Lost Cause I don't care for.

The melancholy is effective, the sadness is not. Maybe it's too maudlin for me to hear it as authentically sad? The strings sweeten things up so much that it doesn't feel stark or lonely, it feels like watching a pops orchestra in a thunderstorm.

Yeah there’s a bit of that. It came out when I was in the midst of a breakup so I really prepped myself to get nicely crushed by it but ultimately it kinda felt artificial. Still some great songs. Soft spot for « Guess I’m Doing Fine » for its Hank Williams references

Oh yeah the songs are great, aside from Lost Cause. And the production is really lush. Nigel and Beck's dad really pulled through. When I'm sad, I'm more likely to hit up One Foot In the Grave-- there's a picture in the liner of Beck by himself in a room with no furniture and linoleum from the '50s, playing guitar in a rickety chair wearing a couple layers of flannel and a wool beanie like the room is neither furnished nor heated, and that's kind of what the album is like.

https://www.stereogum.com/2200152/sea-change-turns-20/reviews/the-anniversary/

Where has the time gone?

"round the bend" is a stunning track imo

― majority whip, majority nae nae (m bison), Friday, March 27, 2020 10:14 AM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

m bison otm, also display name hall of fame

Some interesting facts:

I met you...at JC POLLney - ILM Artist Poll #97 - BECK - the Results Thread

27. Guess I'm Doing Fine (my vote in this poll but not my first pick in my Top 25, was 25)
30. The Golden Age
31. Lonesome Tears
34. Lost Cause
36. Paper Tiger
45. Sunday Sun
47. Little One
51. It's All in Your Mind
121. Already Dead
129. End of the Day

"Round the Bend" and "Side of the Road" didn't get a vote

democracy doesnt work

I saw a few shows of the tour with Flaming Lips as backing band and while they often had a weird mismatched energy I still remember “Round the Bend” was always a stark & stunning highlight of each gig. Wish I’d found room for it on my ballot.

saw them on that tour also. Beck had gotten food poisoning before the show and managed to still bust moves during the Odelay/MV tracks. My tour shirt from that is still somewhere iirc. Beckon the paining exists?!?!

One of my first concerts was the "solo" tour he did before the album came out. Smokey Hormel actually joined him for a good part of the set (maybe even most of it), but otherwise it was Beck doing a lot of songs that I never heard him perform before - unveiling stuff from Sea Change but also covers that could've laid the groundwork for it like Big Star's "Kangaroo," John Lennon's "Love," Hank Williams's "(I Heard That) Lonesome Whistle" (maybe another of his songs too), the Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning," etc. One of the best shows I've ever seen, and I even met him after the show with a bunch of other fans - talked to us for like 20 minutes and he couldn't have been nicer and more charming. That alone made me a fan for life. Bought the album the day it came out and it's still one of my very favorites.

awesome! i would spend hours sifting through his website, which was incredibly detailed during that era (setlists, lyrics, unreleased tracks, etc.)

It really was a great website. IIRC you could even stream high quality videos, which was a pretty big deal - this was before YouTube which either hadn't started up yet or hadn't become widely used. I remember the video for "Hell Yes" debuting on Beck's site - that was great, partly because it was the 8-Bit remix (aka "Ghettochip Malfunction") which I liked more than what was later released on the album.

I saw that solo tour too and yeah it was an all-time favorite gig for me as well, have always wished for a high-quality bootleg from one of those shows but I don’t think I ever found one. I remember he opened with a version of “No Expectations” that was just incredible

Still a boring-ass album.

Some people find Nick Drake boring too. Not everyone gets it.

I'd have picked "Little One" - eye-opening chord progression, finally some power in the instrumental arrangement, and in the chorus Beck finally projects his voice so it doesn't get stuck somewhere in his chest. But I considerably prefer Morning Phase to this album. Even Modern Guilt - same mood, but with some wit and with an appealing economy of means.

Would kill to hear 21st century Beck do one of these acoustic songwriter albums that is actually fully stripped down and acoustic, an album of live-in-the-room tracks that all sound like “Sing It Again” from Mutations. but idk, with his production sensibilities it seems unlikely these days

I kind of wonder if he's done it already and it's sitting on the shelf. When the revelations about the Universal fire leaked out, Beck mentioned that he had a lot of stuff stored at Universal:

"I negotiated 20 years ago to try and get control of my masters. I wasn’t willing to go to war for it, but it’s something I’ve asked many times. I wish that I had been able to make copies...there are dozens and dozens of reels of all kinds of songs and ideas that never got finalized or finished that should have seen the light of day sometime, but probably won’t...In 2001, I went into the studio and recorded 24 Hank Williams covers and did a whole double-album of solo covers of Hank Williams gospel, honky-tonk songs. It was something I did maybe a year before I did Sea Change. That’s probably lost. Probably a lot of others. I have tape cassettes of things like that around, but as far as masters they’re probably gone.” (Less than a day later, he posted on IG: "Since the time of that interview we have found out that my losses in the fire were minimal.")

Last night at the end of the Sunday Night Football game Beck was in some sort of promo where he was covering Neil Young "Old Man." It was sort of strange and Chris Collinsworth seemed to love it.