Beck - Sea Change [6/30]

Artist:

Beck

See Also:

Oldham, Will Smith, Elliott

Description:

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.

Album Information

Release Date:

06/30/2009

Type:

Performer

Genre:

Rock & Pop

Subgenre:

Alternative

Label:

Mofi

Catalog Number:

MOF-CD-780

Original Release Year:

2002

# of Discs:

1

SPARS Coding:

DDD

Studio/Live:

Studio

Mono/Stereo:

Stereo

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