Beck - Sea Change
NME.COM feature on Beck - Sea Change album including album review, artwork, tracks, listen now, tour dates, discography and more.
Release date: 23 September 2002
Tracklisting click track to read more
- The Golden Age
- Paper Tiger
- Guess I'm Doing Fine
- Lonesome Tears
- Lost Cause
- End Of The Day
- It's All In Your Mind
- Round The Bend
- Already Dead
- Sunday Sun
- Little One
- Side Of The Road
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Beck - Sea Change: Wikipedia Album Entry
Beck has always been known for his ever-changing moods -- particularly since they often arrived one after another on one album, sometimes within one song -- yet the shift between the neon glitz of Midnite Vultures and the lush, somber Sea Change is startling, and not just because it finds him in full-on singer/songwriter mode, abandoning all of the postmodern pranksterism of its predecessor. What's startling about Sea Change is how it brings everything that's run beneath the surface of Beck's music to the forefront, as if he's unafraid to not just reveal emotions, but to elliptically examine them in this wonderfully melancholy song cycle. If, on most albums prior to this, Beck's music was a sonic kaleidoscope -- each song shifting familiar and forgotten sounds into colorful, unpredictable combinations -- this discards genre-hopping in favor of focus, and the concentration pays off gloriously, resulting in not just his best album, but one of the greatest late-night, brokenhearted albums in pop. This, as many reviews and promotional interviews have noted, is indeed a breakup album, but it's not a bitter listen; it has a wearily beautiful sound, a comforting, consoling sadness. His words are often evocative, but not nearly as evocative as the music itself, which is rooted equally in country-rock (not alt-country), early-'70s singer/songwriterism, and baroque British psychedelia. With producer Nigel Godrich, Beck has created a warm, enveloping sound, with his acoustic guitar supported by grand string arrangements straight out of Paul Buckmaster, eerie harmonies, and gentle keyboards among other subtler touches that give this record a richness that unveils more with each listen. Surely, some may bemoan the absence of the careening, free-form experimentalism of Odelay, but Beck's gifts as a songwriter, singer, and musician have never been as brilliant as they are here. As Sea Change is playing, it feels as if Beck singing to you alone, revealing painful, intimate secrets that mirror your own. It's a genuine masterpiece in an era with too damn few of them.
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Beck - Sea Change Lyrics
Beck - The Golden Age Lyrics
Put your hands on the wheel
Let the golden age begin
Let the window down
Feel the moonlight on your skin
Beck - Side of The Road Lyrics
Something better than this, someplace I'd like to go
To let all I've learned tell me what I know
About the kind of life I never thought I'd live
Till the ugly truth showed me what it did
Beck - Round The Bend Lyrics
We don't have to worry
Life goes where it does
Faster than a bullet
From an empty gun
Beck - Lost Cause Lyrics
Your sorry eyes cut through the bone
They make it hard to leave you alone
Leave you here, wearing your wounds
Waving your guns at somebody new
Beck - Little One Lyrics
Go to sleep
We're so tired now
Altogether in a snake pit of souls
Beck - Already Dead Lyrics
Time wears away all the pleasures of the day
All the treasures you could hold
Days turn to sand, losing strength in every hand
They can't hold you anymore
Beck - All in Your Mind Lyrics
Well it's all in you mind
It's all in you mind
Well it's all in your mind
And I wanted to be
Beck - Lonesome Tears Lyrics
Lonesome tears, I can't cry them anymore
I can't think of what they're for oh they ruin me every time
But I'll try to leave behind some days
These tears just can't erase, I don't need them anymore
Beck - Guess I'm Doing Fine Lyrics
There's a blue bird at my window
I can't hear the songs he sings
All the jewels in Heaven
They don't look the same to me
Beck - Paper Tiger Lyrics
Just like a paper tiger
Torn apart by idle hands
Through the halter skelter morning
Fix yourself while you still can
Beck - Sunday Sun Lyrics
Haven't got a lot to learn
And my eyes they stray again
Looking for a satellite
In the rays of heaven again
