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Many of these harrowing tunes, like "Lonesome Tears" and "Guess I'm Doing Fine" have the lonely blues feel of Beck's similar-sounding Mutations, and they definitely get better with repeated play.
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Sea Change not only signals a pinnacle in his career but may just be remembered, in an environment fueled by accelerating cycles of disposable culture, as one of this young decade's best records.
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An overproduced, sapped-down album that sounds really nice but fails to stick.
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Here, as on Mutations, he confuses lyrical simplicity and standard-tuning, key-of-C songwriting with the unpretentious directness of his idols.
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It improves on Mutations with sparkling variation and a depth of emotion Beck seldom seems to achieve.
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A perfect treasure of soft, spangled woe sung with a heavy open heart.... It's the best album Beck has ever made.
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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 he's unafraid to not just reveal emotions, but to elliptically examine them in this wonderfully melancholy song cycle.
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Sea Change is different (and, in a way, less interesting) than everything Beck has previously done, but he has a rare gift that he shares with precious few artists, Prince and Bob Dylan amongst them: no matter what he does, Beck will always be interesting.
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An emotive, often sorrowful work that features his most personal lyrics to date.
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Sea Change joins Weezer's Maladroit and the Red Hot Chili Peppers' By the Way on the list of beautiful-but-sad 2002 L.A. LPs.
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With repeated listenings, the sluggish ditties transform into a beautiful, mournful hymn of love won and lost.
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Beck has rarely performed with such maturity and confidence, breathing a rich, often haunting baritone into songs that seem to follow a plotline thread of despair after the end of a relationship.
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Certainly his most personal record, arguably his best.
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For the first time in his career he has made an album that is clearly not a product of “Beck”, the single-syllabled entertainer, but rather that of “Beck Hansen”, the person.
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One of his finest efforts to date.
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This is beautiful music set in minor keys.
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Its startling brand of dreamlike space-folk, while reminiscent of earlier efforts like Stereopathic Soul Manure, is a wholly unique venture.
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Beck swaddles the hurt in a lush assortment of elements that would sound like Babel under anyone else's direction.
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Sea Change, while still a very good disc, is a disappointment in that it marks the first time Beck has ever retraced his steps.
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Beck desperately aims for Johnny Cash's funereal blues, but the unremitting bleakness of Sea Change more closely resembles alternative rock's limpid whine.
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The most disappointing aspect of this record is that Beck has fallen into the trap of confusing earnestly repeated clichés for personal lyrics.
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BlenderA great record to play at 3 A.M. [#10, p.112]
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Q MagazineOnce you've let it grow on you, Sea Change is largely so lovely that you'll forgive him. [Oct 2002, p.98]
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UncutThis is pretty gloomy going, not rendered much easier by the lugubrious baritone in which Beck delivers his emotional autopsies, or the vague, amorphous melodies. [Nov 2002, p.116]
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MojoSea Change aches too thoroughly to be mere career shift. It's the kind of album that at times seems too sad for the singer's own good. [Album of the Month, Oct 2002, p.90]
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SpinA supremely dainty-assed achievement that jerks real tears. [Oct 2002, p.111]
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The WireThe risky juxtapositions that mark his best work are critically missing. [#224, p.51]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 158 out of 176
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Mixed: 8 out of 176
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Negative: 10 out of 176
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Aug 11, 2011
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Mar 13, 2012
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WesF.Jun 15, 2007