Beck
Sea Change
Universal

Who wouldn't want to be Beck? Thirty-two years old, loaded, hunky in that hip way that doesn't require weightlifting, dada lyricist, beat psychic, melody chef, loved in Japan, a former couch-hopper turned worldwide celeb, the anti-slacker with a Midwestern lilt and big city shimmy, always fresh and never, at least not to date, predictable.

Case in point: After 1996's Odelay proved his cut-and-mix wizardry, Beck did an about-face and earned himself a whole new sect of fans. On Mutations, he filtered acoustic guitar through a tidal wave of backing instruments, then topped it off with brilliant down-and-out imagery ("holding hands with an impotent dream in a brothel of fake energy") and cynical whimsy ("love is a plague in a mix-match parade") to create his most timeless contribution yet.

Sea Change, which reunites Beck with Mutations producer Nigel Godrich, again builds upon a simple foundation. But aside from Godrich's pristine production, which frames Beck's suede-jacket vocals like golden fringe, Sea Change shares none of Mutations' musical and lyrical eclectics. Love is a plague again, that's for sure, but this time the sentiment is spoken with an auditor's clarity.

Sometimes shockingly sincere, Sea Change is for the morning after, a soundtrack to the guilty thoughts that invade the mind after a night of Midnite Vultures fun. Ghostly strings and slide guitars float in and out, underscoring a mood of cold reflection. The words themselves speak an exhaustion not heard from Beck since the moody blues of his early recordings. "How could this love, ever turning, never turn its eye on me?" he asks early on. "How could this love, ever changing, never change the way I feel?"

Yeah. And that's pretty much how it goes throughout Sea Change. If there's a moment of levity, it comes early, on the Serge Gainsbourg tribute "Paper Tiger" — itself a sparse tune based on a cool stunted beat and almost spoken-word vocals. From there, though, track titles say it all: "Guess I'm Doing Fine," "Lonesome Tears," "Lost Cause," "Already Dead," "Side of the Road." It's Beck channeled through your 13-year-old sister's poetry.

All that melancholy may sound overdone, but Beck wins once again with Sea Change, mostly because he knows enough to let the song lead the emotion and not the other way around. On a mellow, extraordinarily mannered, thematically monotone album, Beck pieces together twelve tracks that rarely feel redundant.

Yes, it's stark. Yes, it's sad. But Sea Change is also gorgeously atmospheric. At its finest point — where the cyclone string crescendo of "Lonesome Tears" gives way to the plucky confessional "Lost Cause" — Sea Change backs dreary track up to dreary track; yet the shift from one to the other is so dramatic that it improves both songs immeasurably.

Sea Change arrives eight years after Beck's unlikely break out, "Loser," at a point in which he can simultaneously do no wrong and do no right. With four critical successes under his belt, he's afforded some leeway. But he's also exposed to some harsh skepticism, especially toward such plain-spoken lyrics.

"[T]he most disappointing aspect of this record is that Beck has fallen into the trap of confusing earnestly repeated clichés for personal lyrics," wrote James Hannaham in the Village Voice. "He does it so often that you hope it's an ironic gesture at first. It ain't."

For a word-jester like Beck, the sincerity of Sea Change comes at a price. But for the rest of us, it's an unexpected, surprisingly straight-forward look into what it's really like to be Beck. And it turns out when you strip away the laser-guided rump shake and razzmatazz routine, it's a life as painfully ordinary as any.

— Casey Logan (logankc@hotmail.com)