Sea Change by Beck

Pros: Inspired songs, lovely vocals, interesting arrangements
Cons: May be too depressing for some. Unlike earlier Beck outings.

Beck is the kind of singer/songwriter/man-boy that is much too easy to fall in love with. The moment that I first heard Mellow Gold (1993) I was hooked. The video for Loser just served to further intensify my feelings for the...

Pros: Crisp clean sound, lucid and dreamy, worthy surround mix
Cons: An almost too soft, mumbling Beck

Way back in 1994 Beck landed right in the middle of grunge and an angst filled music scene to spit out a white boy rap appropriately titled Loser. I loved that tune, kind of in the same way that I enjoy watching David Spade as Finch do...

Pros: Truly the best use of surround sound I have heard.
Cons: The album's hypnotic melancholic waves of sound may send you into a deep coma.

Pink woke from his hotel room to the steady heartbeat of the opening of Dark Side of the Moon on SACD He looked into his magic mirror. "Mirror mirror on the wall, who has the fairest surround sound album of them all?" "Beck" the mirror replied. ...

Pros: 'The Golden Age' and a few other songs work
Cons: Mostly overproduced and uninspired

When you're going through a depression, it's hard to create anything. The few things you do manage to finish seem awful and needlessly miserable, as if the ideas are there but the energy and life are missing. You don't feel like being around anyone, and ...

Pros: Achingly beautiful songs, painful but excellent lyrics
Cons: Some may be put off by the absence of Beck's party persona

Ah, Beck. Nothing quite gets my juices flowing like a new Beck album.

Given my recent hiatus from the reviewing world, there isn't much I could now say about Sea Change as a body of work that hasn't already been said. Bla bla bla...

Pros: Loverly stuff
Cons: Repetitive

Sexed-up white-bred funkadelic Beck is a big fan of roleplaying, apparently. Serving in different capacities over the course of several mid-to-late 90s gems, he reinvented himself more times than Madonna at a costume ball - sometimes he was...

Pros: A Painful & Cerebral Masterpiece from Beck.
Cons: The Pain He Had to Go Through for This Album.

Poor Beck, he’s one of the most exciting artists of the 1990s with such albums as “Mellow Gold”, “One Foot in the Grave”, “Mutations”, “Midnite Vultures”, and his 1996 genre-defining masterpiece “Odelay” but...

Pros: Beautiful arrangements, strong songs
Cons: Very sad

Beck Hansen is one of the most eclectic artists of his generation. From the folk hippie rap of “Loser” on Mellow Gold to the super-funky “Sexxlaws” on Midnight Vultures, Beck continues to find new musical areas to explore. After the end ...

Pros: Some Beck folk rock influenced classics... Some stunning lyrics.
Cons: Beck sings Bruce Springsteen, Nick Drake....

Well, at last, the long awaited 2002 Beck album is finally upon us, and as the title of the album suggests, "SEA CHANGE" represents a significant sea change from the unabashed exhilarating funk of Beck's "MIDNIGHT VULTURES".


And boy, is...

Pros: Beautiful, mellow, insightful, amazing arrangements
Cons: Narts

There are some artists that no one on Earth knows what to make of. And that can be both a good and bad thing. Unfortunately, with the way popular music is these days, it’s usually the latter. There are too many phonies out their maintaining that...

Pros: He's still one sexy mutha
Cons: His girlie left him :*(

Up until now, the thrills that one got from Beck’s music were intellectual, not emotional. Not that one could ever doubt his sincerity (“ironic” is as misplaced an adjective for Beck’s work as “innovative” is for Radiohead), but...

Pros: +Surprisingly emotive string arrangements +Desert, dusk, driving feel +little one
Cons: -Sadness as a crutch - Suited for just one mood -I'm getting bored

Technicolor tears are dripping from Beck's eyes on that cover. If you like the cover, you'll probably like the CD. But I don't wanna get all depressed and pitiful! Then don't listen to Sea Change. This is a depressing, pitiful album. ...

Pros: Songwriting, musicianship
Cons: Sleepy, depressing mumbles

Before I begin, let me confess that I never much cared for Beck's previous work. I saw him as a pretentious little pansy fawned over by music critics, highly overrated. I found no soul in his music, which was a supposedly ironic collage of different...

Pros: Everlasting gloom.
Cons: Beck will find happiness again.

[He types at the writer and drinks White Russians and glances at the CD player... Beauty this Sea Change . . .]

Beck has always done, and it sounds dear, the profit. He wrote according to inquiries and these twelve come-dark songs break...

Pros: Incredible lyrics, melody, and atmosphere.
Cons: A little depressing.

I've never been a big Beck fan. I had a certain amount of respect for him, and I always recognized his obvious talent. However, his previous work was too strange for me, and I could never get into the "culture" of Beck.

"Sea Change" is...