Performer Notes
- Personnel includes: Beck (vocals, acoustic guitar & electric guitars, banjo, keyboards, synthesizer, glockenspiel, percussion); Smokey Hormel (electric guitar, acoustic slide guitar, bamboo saxophone, piano); Jason Faulkner (electric guitar); Roger Mannning (banjo, Indian banjo, Wurlitzer piano, harmonium, clavinet, syntesizer, glockenspiel, percussion, background vocals); Nigel Godrich (keyboards, percussion); Justin Meldal-Johnsen (electric bass, upright bass, percussion, background vocals); Joey Waronker (drums, percussion); James Gadson (drums).
- SEA CHANGE was nominated for the 2003 Grammy Awards for Best Alternative Music Album.
- Though 1998's MUTATIONS was the closest Beck had come at the time to conventional (read: non-ironic) troubadourisms, he quickly declared the album a detour and swiftly followed it up with the Prince-influenced about-face of MIDNITE VULTURES. It comes as something of a surprise, then, that he should focus his subsequent efforts on an unprecedentedly earnest singer-songwriter album like SEA CHANGE, which finds him purposefully peeling away his multiple levels of irony. Trumpeted in the press as a post-breakup album, SEA CHANGE has been called Beck's BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, and it's true that he'd never been anywhere near this emotionally naked before.
- Sonically, he seems to have (at least momentarily) laid aside his R&B/hip-hop aspirations in pursuit of a late-'60s/early-'70s folk-rock aesthetic. Several cuts have a lazy, Gram Parsons-like country-rock tinge. On "Round the Bend," he delivers a moody, string-swathed lament obviously modeled on Nick Drake's "River Man." While some might lament the departure of the word-spinning wiseguy, SEA CHANGE still seems an inevitable and important step in Beck's artistic maturation.
Professional Reviews
Rolling Stone (12/26/02, p.103) - Included in Rolling Stone's "50 Best Albums of 2002"
Rolling Stone (10/3/02, pp.97-9) - 5 stars out of 5 - "...A perfect treasure of soft, spangled woe sung with a heavy open heart. It's the best album Beck has ever made....This is his BLOOD ON THE TRACKS."
Spin (1/03, p.70) - Ranked #3 on Spin's list of 2002's "Albums of the Year"
Spin (10/02, p.111) - 9 out of 10 - "...A supremely dainty-assed achievement that jerks real tears..."
Entertainment Weekly (9/27/02, p.85) - "...A beautiful mournful hymn of love won and lost....For the first time, Beck is playing himself..." - Rating: B+
Q (12/02, p.65) - Included in Q Magazine's "50 Best Albums of 2002"
Q (10/02, pp.98-9) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...Very nearly a very great album....brooding atmospherics, reflective acoustic settings, a desert road movie conducted at a snail's place..."
Uncut (1/03, p.94) - Ranked #8 in Uncut's "100 Best Albums of the Year" - "...SEA CHANGE is Beck's BLOOD ON THE TRACKS..."
The Wire (10/02, p.51) - "...The mood is muted, constant, studiously introverted..."
CMJ (12/30/02, p.10) - Ranked #3 on CMJ's "Top 10 of 2002"
CMJ (10/7/02) - "...Truly soulful songs....this record is really a spotlight on a man and his guitar....there is a beauty inherent in sadness. Beck is quite clearly intimately familiar with it..."
Vibe (11/02, p.154) - "...Steeped in gorgeous, tear-stained country ballads..."
Mojo (Publisher) (1/03, p.73) - Ranked #7 in Mojo's "Best Albums of 2002"
Mojo (Publisher) (10/02, p.90) - "...There's no trickery here, only transformation..."
NME (Magazine) (9/21/02, p.38) - 6 out of 10 - "...A rainy afternoon album--quietly affecting, occasionally sublime..."
