If a new release lives up to all of its overwhelming hype, the buyer feels they have made the right call. They have invested in something that will provide repeat enjoyment. Sadly, this is not the case with the new album by the modern day genius, Beck. His latest, Sea Change, may be well-made from track to track, but it never veers off course from its mellow sound, until, by about midway through the album, the songs congeal and fail to exist on their own. Where are all the catchy, left turns that Beck specializes in dishing out so well?
One need only turn to Beck's track record to explain the misstep here. Although 1996's Odelay was a wild amalgamation of slacker bliss and unfettered trip hop, his much anticipated follow-up Mutations was a tropical variation on folk music, without the sufficient vision to pull it off successfully. 1999's rebound offering Midnite Vultures was a giddy, hyperactive rush that demonstrated Beck's true versatility, a blender full of outrageously catchy pop songs seasoned with squeaks and blips. True to form, with this on-again/off-again history in mind, Sea Change falls way short on the creativity scale. Where once the talented musician refused to let the diverse content on his albums slip into mediocrity, he is content here to have almost every song fall into a generic pattern.
The first two tracks seem to be the best, but that's only because they're the first of at least a half dozen more copies of themselves to follow. "The Golden Age" is slowly serenic, building towards a climactic (although I consider it to be anti-climactic) ending, and "Paper Tiger" cunningly incorporates an orchestra into its creeping sound, but then you get to "Guess I'm Doing Fine" and you'll swear you're back at the beginning of the album again. Mindbogglingly, "Lonesome Tears" and "Nothing I Haven't Seen" are clearly more of the same: slow drumbeats, familiar chorus constructs, all meshed with some strings to deceptively provide them with some supposed artistic validity. I suppose the accoustic, self-deprecating "Lost Cause" and the CD closer "Side of the Road" are noble efforts, but they arrive too late in the game to crack any substantial dents.
As odd as it is to say, individually, the songs on the album do stand on their own fairly well. There isn't a cut that's sloppily produced, but, again, far too many of them sound the same. Considering they're coming from the guy who barked through a song like "Novocane" or provided instructions how to defy the logic of all "Sexx Laws", Sea Change is a passive outing from an artist I admire, whom I hoped would never mellow out to this extent.
