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Album Review: New beck Album - "Sea Change"
    #905587 -

About a month ago I was saddened when someone bumped a thread entitled "New Beck Album" and it turned out to be two years old, referring to Midnite Vultures. Well today a new album really did come out, so I figured I'd offer to anyone who cares my humble opinion of this disc and the progression of Beck's music up to that point.

----

The first I heard of the man called Beck was at a particularly weak junior high dance circa 1993. After appeasing the sparse crowd with the usual pre-teen dance staples, the DJ appeared gain the confidence to experiment a little; a truly alien form of acoustic riffery exploded from the speakers. Seemingly nonsensical but edgy hip-hop lyrics gave rise to the brilliant refrain I'm a loser baby / so why don't you kill me. I don't remember if I said it out loud or only in my had but I exclaimed "What the fuck is this crazy shit?!" For the first time since Smells Like Teen Spirit, I was in head-over-heels love with a song. The day after the dance, I purchased the cassette Mellow Gold, and to my surprise the rest of the tape was just as brilliant.

The next two Beck albums would fall well short of this watermark, illustrating his musical evolution away from the patented funk-hop-folk-tronica in Mellow Gold, and more towards more humble, and deeply personal balladry.

Sea Change seems to be the final product of that evolution. It appears as though humor, once a staple of Beck's music, and only found in traces on recent albums, has left the picture completely. What is left is a polished, melancholy psychedelia that seems more to comfort than to entertain. While less experimental than perhaps all of Beck's albums, Sea Change has an air of maturity about it that has not been seen since the enigmatic Mellow Gold.

Driven invariably by simple acoustic chord progressions and arpeggios, Beck takes us through twelve world-weary, salt-of-the-earth numbers. Opening with the positive but reserved "The Golden Age," Beck seems to state his thesis for the album: he is eternally comfortable in his post-flamboyancy days. From there the record lingers at this comfortable level until reaching its climax in the album's apparent centerpiece, "Sunday Sun," finishing with the telling refrain, There's no other ending / Sunday Sun / Yesterdays are mending / Sunday Sun.

The guitar lines are subtly augmented with quite tasteful pedal-steel and string arrangements. It is slightly less twangy and slightly more liquid than its closest cousin, 1998's Mutations. Electronic noises are very sparse, but make themselves apparent at a few choice appropriate moments throughout the disc. Most of the songs are quite humble and undramatic, but still are able to stir a crescendo of emotion in the listener. One almost can't help but feel Beck's melancholy in numbers like "Guess I'm Doing Fine" and Lonesome Tears." Sea Change ends aptly with the retrospective "Side of the Road," wrapping itself up quite neatly, leaving the listener neither inspired nor disappointed -- just comfortable.

1/2 out of


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Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man.  For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire.  Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it.

~ R.W. Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

:heartpump:

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Re: Album Review: New beck Album - "Sea Change" [Re: WhiskeyClone]
    #905591 -

i like it when i am in the mood for it... it took me by surprise...

i listen to paper tiger a lot


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-----------------
too busy with living to live
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Re: Album Review: New beck Album - "Sea Change" [Re: deviation13]
    #906941 -

Yeah I think Paper Tiger is my favourite now.


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Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man.  For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire.  Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it.

~ R.W. Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

:heartpump:

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Re: Album Review: New beck Album - "Sea Change" [Re: WhiskeyClone]
    #906963 -

yoinks!


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*user out of date*

the only pms pants gets:
<pants> "WTF UR PIKTUR IS SO STIPID WTF FUCK U"

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Re: Album Review: New beck Album - "Sea Change" [Re: Abudiwa]
    #907046 -

Maxim Magazine gave the new Beck Album 5 Stars... They say that it is more or a psychadelic country/bluse thingee and that Beck can actualy sing pretty damn good when he tries.
Some day I might check it out..


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GabbaDj

FAMM.ORG             

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Re: Album Review: New beck Album - "Sea Change" [Re: GabbaDj]
    #907440 -

The new album is good, but Mellow Gold blows it out of the water IMHO. If you're gonna check out a Beck album, get that one. But yeah I think his singing is best on the new album.

Then again, Maxim chose Pearl Jam's Vitalogy as one of the 50 worst albums of all time. WTF? I suspect their music staff is deaf and just makes things up based on the cover art.


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Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man.  For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire.  Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it.

~ R.W. Emerson, "Self-Reliance"

:heartpump:

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Re: Album Review: New beck Album - "Sea Change" [Re: WhiskeyClone]
    #907567 -

It's pretty good. It sounds good now
but it's not going to enter steady
rotation.

I still think Midnite Vultures is the
greatest.

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Re: Album Review: New beck Album - "Sea Change" [Re: bivalve]
    #920924 -

This album is a lot more along the lines of "one-foot in the grave" which I was always a huge fan of. I have grown to like every beck album a whole lot, and even though im not into this one so much, I am giving it time.

BTW I am extremely excited to see him in concert with the flaming lips. I can't imagine what kind of crazy shit will result from that mix.


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:hst:
Society in every form is a blessing,
but government at its best is but a necessary evil 
- Thomas Paine

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Re: Album Review: New beck Album - "Sea Change" [Re: gluke bastid]
    #928803 -

Hello all, I'm a new poster..long time reader at the shroomery. I had to comment on this topic because beck is one of my favs.

I agree with gluke. I was introduced to becks one foot in the grave on my third or fourth mushrooms experiance. It is by far my favorite album to listen to on shrooms still. I also like mellow gold. "steal my body home" can take you to places you've never been before.

As far as the new album goes, I didn't like it at first, but after listening to it in my car all day one day it grew on me and i can't stop listening to it now. It's a little more depressing than older beck, so i don't suggest listening to it on shrooms unless you're a pretty happy person. However, I do suggest listening to any older beck tripping, preferably odelay and before.


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---------------
"You'll see me, I'll be there, with my nose in the grass...
One for me, one for you.
Two for me, one for you.
Three for me, one for you.
End of the sack, now the fungi's they are bloom."

-Incubus "Psychopsilocybin"

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General Interest > Music, Art, and Media
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