Sea Change
Beck
2002
Album Summary
Sea Change is the eighth studio album by American musician Beck, released on September 24, 2002 by Geffen Records. Recorded over a two-month period in Los Angeles with producer Nigel Godrich, the album features themes of heartbreak and desolation, solitude, and loneliness. For the album, much of Beck's trademark cryptic and ironic lyrics were replaced by simpler, more sincere lyrical content. He also eschewed the heavy sampling of his previous albums for live instrumentation. Beck cited the breakup with his longtime girlfriend as the major influence on the album. Sea Change peaked at number 8 on the Billboard 200, later being certified gold in 2005 by the RIAA. It was met with favorable responses from critics, who considered Beck's transition from sonically experimental work to emotionally charged balladry to be successful and convincing. The album later appeared in many publications' lists of the best albums of the 2000s, and it remains one of Beck's best-reviewed recordings."Lost Cause" and "Guess I'm Doing Fine" were released as promotional-only singles.
WikipediaBeck is sad. Sad Beck make song. Good time listen, feel bad for Beck. Golden Age, Lost Cause, and Round the Bend were great tracks.
I refreshed the page and it ate my review, so you get bullet points this time: • I just yesterday said I want my downer albums to at least thrash about a bit before collapsing under the weight of the world, so I appreciate that Sea Change has a little bit of that going on. • "Break up with Beck" produces solid results for a sad sack LP, although not as good as "introduce Trent Reznor to heroin." • This thing is way too long. Beck adheres to a "mope around with an acoustic guitar > introduce strings, maybe some synth > get all spacey in the closing seconds" flowchart far too closely here. • By the time he's singing "It's nothing that I haven't seen before" around the halfway point, I feel like I'm being pranked, except the only funny gag Sea Change has to offer is on Sunday Sun, where the little scamp seems to have recorded his verses with an Ed, Edd, n Eddy-sized Jawbreaker in his mouth. It's fine. I would've preferred Odelay, but of course I would. Key Tracks: The Golden Age
Man what a beautiful album. The guitar playing is superb, Beck’s voice is on point and I love the lushness of the strings. The sadness is palpable here and I don’t know if this is an album that I can come back to often for that reason. But I do love this record. Favorite song: It’s All In Your Mind Least favorite song: Little One (I guess)
I love Beck. I never know what to expect, but it always sounds like him but never repetitive or boring
I feel like this album is from the point of view of Major Tom, stuck out in space by himself after communication is lost from NASA, From David Bowe's song Space Oddity.
Incredible vibes, and such a different sound from what I'm used to from Beck, especially the albums preceeding this. That being said, can't go wrong with this sound.
Beck is one of my favorite artists so far and it was great to hear something a little more serious from him. Great stuff!
So different from what I expected with my knowledge of other Beck albums. A much more calm, melancholy vibe and feeling with slower tracks and more ambience. The riff-driven songs I know from Beck are replaced with swelling strings, soft acoustic guitars, and more feeling and emotional impact. What a cool album and a pleasant and welcome surprise.
This album is the equivalent of like, doing the bare minimum extremely well. Production is PHENOMENAL and songwriting is primitive. It’s less impressive than his previous outings like mellow gold and odelay but some bangers hit the feels pretty well. Beck has no edge on sea change but he’s riding sad boy wave pretty well.
I was a huge Beck fan beginning with "Mellow Gold" and I must admit that this was the first album of his that was a disappointment to me. From this point on in his career I started to slowly drift away from him. My difficulty with this album stems from a couple things: 1) him reigning in his lyrics to be more conventional, and 2) the consistently depressed tone. I get it, he's human and went through a shitty ordeal with his girlfriend. It's completely understandable that he would want to express his feelings about that, but perhaps for a song or two, rather than a whole album. I don't expect him to be some kind of postmodern cartoon his whole career but what I always liked about him was the way he was able to balance a wide variety of emotions on an album, or even in a single song. Another thing that bugs me on this album is illustrated by "It's all in your mind," which is a remake of a much older song of his. I love the original version of that song but somehow the dour tone of "Sea Change" as a whole kind of drags it down - takes some of the raw spirit out of it somehow. I can enjoy these melancholy types of songs of his in a different context but as they are presented here all together I find them slightly off-putting. I think what it really comes down to is this: I find this album to be too pretty, too perfect. The lush string arrangements being a good example of this. I can understand why he would want to try for something like this as an artist; to carefully craft something pristine and beautiful, but to me it lacks the loose soul he so naturally exuded in the past. It's like if your girlfriend never really put on makeup or dressed in fancy clothes and then suddenly one day she decided to get this total makeover and buy a Versace evening gown. It's not that she wouldn't look beautiful, but it would come as quite a shock, and somehow it wouldn't feel like "her." However, one thing I didn't have back when it originally came out was a really good pair of headphones to listen this album with. I do now and must say the sound of the album is pretty exquisite. If I separate it from my own personal baggage and hang ups I can at least appreciate it as a sonic achievement. For an album of his that has similar qualities but isn't so completely emotionally bogged down and humorless, try "Mutations" - it is more balanced, and I believe, a superior album.
Beck gets dumped and all mopey. The songs are fairly similar in tempo throughout and kind of blend in to one. Maybe he got dumped because he was already mopey and this album was the final straw. I don't blame her. Best Tracks: The Golden Age; Paper Tiger; Lost Cause
On paper I should love this album. It's chill, melancholy folk. It sounds like an album that I would write. It just has the right flourishes of alternative sounds mixed in like the strings or synths. But I just don't love this album. The flourishes can be a bit overpowering and I just don't like Beck's voice. Put some Sufjan Stevens or Ray LaMontagne vocals on this instead and it might be a 5 star album for me. Between the voice and the weirdness of some of the back half I just don't enjoy it that much.
I love this album so much. My first breakup album in 2017. It was perfect. Still perfect to this day.
I’m not the biggest Beck fan. I like most of his stuff and admire how diverse his music is. But man… I love this album. I come back it occasionally when I’m in a certain mood. Great wallowing in sadness album. Great production by Nigel Godrich.
Congratulations Beck, you sad Scientologist son of a so-and-so, you made one of the best albums of the early 2000s.
Much like everyone listening to this record for the first time, I was expecting Beck's jokey, white-boy self. I was not expecting a genuine and deeply personal-sounding record. A similar vibe, in my mind, to "You Want It Darker" by Leonard Cohen: a record that I don't feel like I'm getting everything on first listen, and really want to sit down with and explore the layers. If I ever get my heart broken again, think this is the first record I'll look for. Favorite tracks: "Guess I'm Doing Fine", "Sunday Sun", "End Of the Day"
Wow - so sad and so beautiful to listen to. Sonically fantastic, worth sitting down with a decent set of headphones. And a nice bottle of red. Turn it up and relive your most recent heartbreak, and cry just a little.
I have a long standing love for this album - Beck does dreamy alt-country. "Mellow Gold" is my absolute fave Beck album, but you have to take the rough with the smooth there, whereas "Sea Change" is smooth sailing all the way. Fave track - "Guess I'm Doing Fine", maybe, or "Already Dead". This is very much a listen-to-the-whole-album piece for me, though, rather than picking out individual tracks...
Super tranquille et mélancolique, mais tellement bien fait. Les arrangements sont superbes et ce n’est jamais mou.
Got this when it came out and it blew me away. That hasn't changed with time. While it's a far cry from his usual near-mania - and may be lacking in appeal as a consequence - as a confessional album, it drives right to the center of me, and I hold it in slightly higher esteem than much of his other material.
An album that lets you know right up front that this is going to be a sad, wistful journey. Opening track "The Golden Age" is an absolute gut punch, and the hits keep coming from there. Great soundtrack for driving through wide open spaces while contemplating life and how you got there. The strings! My god, the strings.
Even though it is a real slow pace, the songs are well written, passionate in the right places, and nearly all of them have a hook that i really enjoy. If you're in the mellow mood, this is perfect.
Can't separate this one from real life. This came out almost exactly when I was ending a long-term relationship. That then became a relationship again. And then ended again. So dumb. But this was kind of the soundtrack to that, so it's hard to be objective. Still, I think all of this sounds great. I'd been a big fan of Beck since the beginning and this was all sort of a whole new range that really worked for me. Great stuff.
Never listened to this album closely. Always wrote it off as a boring departure for Beck. Of courses was way wrong.
I enjoyed this album a lot. It's serious and sombre, which I like. I like how he touched on deep lyrical themes. I also like his vocals and the soft instrumentals.
Really emotional sound, the story of breaking up and loss flows through the album.
I put this on when I am feeling down and I really want to wallow in it. It's not fun but it's so heart-wrenchingly beautiful. The end of Lonesome Tears goes on and on and on, climbing to the stratosphere, tugging and tugging until you can't bear it any longer, and still keeps going. Past the point of discomfort to a kaleidoscopic mad huge picture of loss and grief.
I’ve long lived this record. Perfect on those rainy days. Beck is versatile and amazing.
I love Beck. Of all of his albums, this one probably doesn't have as wide a range of musical styles. The songwriting was amazing. I didn't pay attention to the lyrics, but my guess is that this is Beck's version of a break up album.
Fantastic. Beck gets serious and changes the trajectory of his career. Fitting name for the album.
Modern production with nick drake melancholia, great. There’s no way the song Sunday sun isn’t a reference to nick drakes Saturday sun
How can such a downer of an album be so good? I know that heartache is responsible for many great songs but I thought an album of depression might be too much. Nope! I'm now listening to Sunday Sun, where a ray of light is piercing through the gloom. He's taken me on a journey that I'll have to visit again.
This album made a powerful impression on me, probably the most I’ve taken from a 1001 album so far. I had never listened to Beck beside his song Loser. He really is a master of genre-bending. This is one of those albums that, looking back, I will associate with this particular time in my life. Paper Tiger is when the orchestra comes in and it’s stunning. Guess I’m Doing Fine is devastating track. His voice sounds country, and has an almost Bruce quality to it. It’s All in Your Mind is another spot I turn the volume up: “and I wanted to be, I wanted to be, wanted to be, your good friend.” Already Dead has to be my favorite on the album. It has a beautiful Celtic lilt. It reminds me of something Orpheus might sing in Hadestown: “Because it feels like I’m watching something dying.” I will be listening to this album for a while. I will admit that I was partial to him because his name is, no doubt, a cooler version of my own. But this 5/5 rating has nothing to do with my namesake and everything to do with a stunning and desolate album.
What a perfect mellow album. Awesome production, mixed with outstanding vocals. Easy 5. So many bangerz! Too many to list, but here’s some to remember. TBz 1. Lonesome Tears 2. Little One 3. Lost Cause 4. Sunday Sun 5. Paper Tiger
This somehow works in Neil Young-does-Goldfrapp kinda way. Love the orchestration, and it feels smarter and more polished than Odelay.
I listened to this album a lot when it came out, it was tough not too, as it was when Beck was at his height of changing genres and sounds from album to album, and this beautiful record showed a matured and more personal side of him--and he also toured on it forever. It's been a bit since I've heard it, but it fit perfectly in on this cold Friday morning. Excellent as always.
Listened to this one a lot when it was released. Still holds up. It’s weird, interesting and sad music. This and Mutations are my favorite Beck albums.
His broken heart has allowed Beck to reach top form here and create a real masterpiece.
A perfect album, the last truly high height from Beck’s discography. Good stuff is still to follow, but this one is stunning.
Ahhhh, one of the albums that saved my life. I'm not saying that listening to this album is therapy, but listening to this album feels like what I perceive good therapy would feel like. You even get to break shit with Sunday Sun. Except for Lonesome Tears and Side Of The Road, every other song is fully engaging. For me this is as close as Beck has gotten to perfect. However, Guero is my favorite cause it's just more fun.
Beck is 100% my soft spot. This album is just one more masterpiece from him.
a little monotone but really good! I'll listen to this again, definitely
Beck traded in his two turntables and a microphone for an acoustic guitar and an atmospheric sound, and it works. Melancholy was in in 2002, and this is among the best that era has to offer. Best track: Round the Bend
Sad space music. Isolating, cold, like having your face against a cold window. The window consistently catching your breath. Its well and snow comfy
Own. Fave song “Lost Cause”. Kind of a classic. Kind of falls of 2nd half.
Very emotional album. I’ve always really enjoyed it and I think it’s great 8,5/10
I like Beck for no reason I can actually identify. This album had a couple of tunes on it that I really like, and I didn't dislike any of them. Somehow, I think that makes it a 4 star effort?
I definitely prefer eclectic genre-shuffling upbeat Beck (Odelay, Guero) to Sadboi Breakup Beck (Sea Change) but this is still really darn good!
Really well made album, it sounds great, but it's not what I go to Beck for.
Considering the motivation of this album... nice chill listen. I should really consider listening more of Beck
Love this record. And I love when Beck would just drop a rando new style on you out of nowhere. "Lost Cause" is just one of the best he's ever done.
Honestly, this warrants another listen as well. Beck is typically pretty nuanced, and maybe I just have to be in the right emotional state to have it hit real good. I wasn't this time, but I think I'd like to be.
Sadboi Beck. Def solid songs. A changeup from the Beck I'm used to. Never knew why I never touched down on this record; I own Odelay, Guero, Modern Guilt, and Mellow Gold
I purchased the CD when it came out and was disappointed at how chill it was. I can appreciate it a lot more now but I think Beck is better when he is more funky
This is really good. I was only familiar with Beck songs that are fairly popular, but haven't listened to any of his albums all the way through. Really mellow and thoughtful. 4 stars.
I was not familiar with these songs from him, but I really enjoyed them!
Could tell Beck had been going through some tough times even if I hadn't read that beforehand. Good, atmospheric stuff. 7/10
Sea Change is not just a record, it's a mood. Which makes it a great album to throw on and listen to in whole.
Highlights: The Golden Age, Paper Tiger, Little One This is a strong, but uncharacteristic offering from Beck, which normally you'd expect genre-stretching folk rock; Sea Change is a little more relaxed, letting Mr. Hanson stretch his legs a bit and dwell a little bit more on the details. Sandwiched between 1999's vivacious Midnight Vultures and the hand-bangin' Guero of 2005, 2002's Sea Change is a brisk 180° change in both directions...It's calm and melancholy, possibly because this was a fresh post-911 world. If Beck's mood swings make your head spin, buckle up, baby, you're gunna get plenty dizzy, because Beck is one of the most versatile musicians alive, and isn't afraid to take on new challenges.
Muss erstmal rausfinden wer die Arrangements geschrieben hat - und wer ihm DAS angetan hat, was er da auf Albumlänge verarbeitet. Meine Güte, diese Opulenz! Dieses Schwelgen in Schwermut! Und dann auch wieder diese Kargheit und Reduktion, bei den Lyrics und selbst beim Orchester - denn hier ist ja kein Streicher und keine Slidegitarre zu viel eingesetzt. Huh, und bei Round The Bend weiß man gar nicht wohin mit sich, vor lauter Grim und Frost und Wärme und Panik und Lethargie, und die Sunday Sun schien auch schon mal freundlicher ... War dieser offenbar große Sea Change der Grund für Kurs auf den sicheren Hafen Scientology? Ich weiß es nicht (würde zeitlich aber passen). Was ich aber jetzt weiß: wie sich Umbruch im Hause Hansen anhört. Volle 4,4 dafür.
Nach wilden Jahren juveniler cut up / hiphop Collagen mit viel Indie Charme und nerdy Ekklektizismus waren mir Beck‘s nachdenkliche „Larvenstadium“-Alben die liebsten. Ehe der schrill-funkige Weird-Pop der „Midnight Vultures“ sein neon-bunten Schmetterlingsflügel ausbreiten konnte, brauchte es „Mutations“. Nach schmerzhafter Trennung von seiner langjährigen Freundin/Verlobten war ein Bedürfnis nach erneuter Introspektion, Bestandsaufnahme und Veränderung groß. „Sea Change“ war diese 2. Verpuppung, und strahlt dabei die weltenflüchtige Wärme eines Songwriter Albums der Siebziger aus; dezenter Elektronik-Flitter setzt leichte Akzente und hilft ein Gegengewicht zu halten zur meist nachvollziehbar melancholischen und dunkel orchestraler Grundstimmung. Es klingt so vertraut und wächst noch ein Stückchen über sich hinaus; dies wäre auch heute noch eine bemerkenswerte Neuerscheinung. Lobende 3.9
Od takiej strony jeszcze nie znalem Becka, bo sluchalem jedynie 2 pierwszych albumikow, ktore wydostaly sie z podziemia, wiec mellow gold i odelay, bo wczesniej chyba nagral 3 inne, ktore jednak nie sa zbyt szeroko dostepne, wiec Beck kojarzyl mi sie zawsze z indyjskim rockiem, ostrymi gitarkami elektrykami, liryka buntowniczej punkowosci i dziwnosci, a na tym albumie pokazal sie z calkiem innej strony, wiekszosc kawalkow to kompozycje napisane w oparciu o akustyka, nie ma tutaj energii ktora byla w wielu miejsach wrecz szoutowana zamiast spiewana, jej miejsce zajely szepty na iscie donowanowych hipnotycznych melodiach, lirycznie jest to material ala blonde on blonde, czyli opowiesc o rozpadzie zwiazku, jest to motyw przewodni calej plyty, wiec mocno gloomerowe viby, osamotnienie alienacja, caly ten jam, o wiele lepszy poziom instrumentalny niz na poprzednich albumikach, zwazajac na to, ze sam Beck opierdziela 6 instrumentow na albumie, to jeszcze 10 osobowa ekipa grajkow studyjnych zostala zebrana i efektem jest krispowy brzmiacy wysoce estetyczny smutek w formie zapisanej w formie dzwiekowej, po tym przesluchu mam uczucie jakbym odkryl artyste na nowo, wiec bedzie czeba dac szanse rowniez innym albumikom jesli bedzie czas i okazja, na plejke wrzucam paper tigera, already dead i end of the day
Beck’s voice seems to be part of the fabric of a lot of music I’ve enjoyed from the mid 90s through to now, whether that be his own stuff or guest vocals...and yet I’ve never listened to a full album of his. Enjoyed this...good music to listen to over dinner. Reminiscent of Nick Drake, The Beatles (sorry Ash), Pink Floyd and even Zero 7 in places. Solid album which I’ve added to my Spotify.
Never listened to this in full prior to today. A really good album that I will definitely revisit.