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Rating: A melancholic cloud hangs over Sea Change.
Beck's voice may seem world-weary, but what beauty.
Beck sings somberly in "The Golden Age": "In these days of getting by / I don’t even try,".
See Change is a folk album of remarkable beauty, but like all folk/country albums, it hides a lot of sadness within.
You can tell just from the titles "Lonesome Tears", "End of the Day", "Already Dead", "Lost Cause".
Where has the dancing boy from “Sexx Laws” & “Nicotine & Gravy” gone?
It's still him, it's still Beck.
He is brave, brilliant, and doesn't make music for critics or to please his fans. He is an artist in continuous evolution, a bit like our Battiato or the late Battisti.
These are "Ahead" artists, perhaps too much.
The songs are brimming with Beck's typical imagery (stray dogs, moonlight, kaleidoscope-like diamonds); his heroes Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan, and Nick Drake, ooze through every record. I know that the generally "snobby" critics categorize the album as a misstep for the singer-songwriter... even for the sound quality, but nothing could be more wrong. This is one of Beck's best albums, capable of transporting you on a relaxing and seductive acoustic journey, and the sounds are perfect, acoustic, vibrant.
There are folk music clichés, easy and predictable rhymes, but what does it matter? Simple things are undoubtedly the best, Beck knows how to be innovative when needed and not in a genre like folk where the only thing that matters is writing a beautiful song.
Why ruin a piece just to be innovative?
Many Italian "Indie" bands that do not make alternative music but simply bad music should take him as an example.
Masterpiece. 5 stars.
BECK – Sea Change
2002
Label: Geffen
Production: Nigel Godrich
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Lost Cause (03:48)
Your sorry eyes, they cut through bone.
They make it hard to leave you alone.
Leave you here wearing your wounds
Waving your guns at somebody new.
Baby you're lost
Baby you're lost
Baby you're a lost cause.
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, but nobody cares.
Baby you're lost
Baby you're lost
Baby you're a lost cause.
I'm tired of fightin'
I'm tired of fightin'
Fighting for a lost cause
There's a place where you are going
You ain't never been before
There's no one laughing at your back now
No one standing at your door
Is that what you thought love was for?
Baby you're lost
Baby you're lost
Baby you're a lost cause
I'm tired of fighting
I'm tired of fighting
Fighting for a lost cause.
02 Paper Tiger (04:36)
just like a paper tiger
torn apart by idle hands
through the helter skelter morning
fix yourself while you still can
no more ashes to ashes
no more cinders from the sky
let all the laws of creation
tell a dead man how to die
oh deserts down below us
and storms up above
like a stray dog gone defective
like a paper tiger in the sun
looking through a broken diamond
to make the past what it should be
through the ruins and the weather
capsized boats in the sea
oh deserts down below us
and storms up above
like a stray dog gone defective
like a paper tiger in the sun
we're just holding on to nothing
to see how long nothing lasts
oh deserts down below us
and storms up above
like a stray dog gone defective
like a paper tiger in the sun
03 Round the Bend (05:15)
We don't have to worry
Life goes where it does
Faster than a bullet
From an empty gun
Turn yourself over
Loose change we could spend
Grinding down diamonds
Round, round, round the bend
People pushing harder
Up against themselves
Make their daggers sharper
Than their faces tell
Babe, its your time now
Loose change we could spend
Where we are going
04 Sunday Sun (04:45)
Haven't got a lot to learn
And my eyes they stray again
Looking for a satellite
In the rays of heaven again
There's no other ending
Sunday sun
Yesterday is ending
Sunday sun
Jealous minds walk in a line
And their faces jade the strain
Stranded in infinity rooms
And they're safe from any harm
There's no other ending
Sunday sun
Yesterdays are mending
Sunday sun
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Other reviews
By nadir
Beck, in search of serene simplicity, writes a complex and not very immediate album.
The guitar returns to an unprecedented acoustic purity on its own.
By Moretto
"Sea Change is an album that is astounding in many ways, bearing witness to the author’s eclecticism."
"The colorful funky of Midnite Vultures transforms into a sound with strong folk flavors, superbly arranged and executed."
