Is irony dead? After the tragic events of last Sept. 11, it was easy to postulate that the stock-in-trade of several lettered generations would be thrown asunder in a grand upwelling of earnestness. Even if by all accounts irony remains alive and well, it seems Beck chose to heed that memo regardless.
His new album, Sea Change, is the most earnest work he has ever done, an unexpected and dramatic reversal of the course charted by 1999’s Midnite Vultures. No tongue-in-cheek Prince imitations, no overzealous horn arrangements and not a single sample adorn the new album’s tracks. In fact, the most subversive thing about Sea Change is the album’s blunt-as-a-barn title. Apparently, Beck’s now so earnest, he can’t be subtle anymore.
It’s not that earnestness is bad and irony is good?these are simply the tools of Beck’s trade. Since riding “Loser” to modern-rock radio ubiquity a decade ago, Beck has used his mainstream success to carve himself a unique place: He became curator of innumerable forgotten remnants of popular culture never meant to be remembered. It’s that notion-musician as archivist of the transient-that is at the ironic core of Beck’s work. In his grand assimilation of folk, R&B, country, Latin and hip-hop elements, nothing is taken with strings attached. They’re ingredients in a musical salad, and Beck gets to make the dressing.
Midnite Vultures began to show the hazards of Beck’s approach, as the dressing got heavy-handed and began to overwhelm the greens. Two tracks, “Hollywood Freaks” and “Debra” (the first a west-coast gangsta nod, the second a Prince-y slow jam), swiftly approach parody when the tongue-in-cheek lyrics and delivery overwhelm the tongue-in-cheek sonic references. The fine line was crossed from pop cultural librarian to pop cultural buffoon. So perhaps it’s lucky Beck has taken a step back on Sea Change.
In particular, he has stepped back to 1998’s Mutations, the supposed album of “throwaways” from the Odelay sessions. The first step in this direction was to rehire producer Nigel Godrich, whose relatively pristine production avoids the Dust Brothers-induced pastiche insanity of Midnite Vultures. Though Godrich isn’t so slick and rigid as to preclude sonic experimentation (this is, after all, the man behind Radiohead’s Kid A and Amnesiac), it isn’t much of a clich? to say Godrich reins Beck in on Sea Change.
The opener, “The Golden Age,” reveals its heart by the third bar, when the bend of a steel guitar rises quietly above gentle strumming. Punctuated only by subtle atmospherics and a lazy vibraphone, Beck distantly moans his lyrics while subdued, almost sad background vocals accentuate the track’s innocuousness. The elements are still present?a folksy touch here, a psychedelic lick there?but they don’t point to a greater scheme. There is nothing to “get” here, and it’s an unfamiliar feeling for a Beck album.
That feeling continues on “Paper Tiger,” which nicely shows off Godrich’s economical production. Tight drums pop gently in the background, a subdued bass rumbles underneath the vocal, until the psychedelic elements pop in again: A trebly guitar lick and lush strings persist until the end. Again, there is no agenda—these elements don’t leave the song feeling over-heavy or overtly psychedelic.
Things get more sonically interesting further into the album. “Sunday Sun” is the album’s oddball?the only track instantly recognizable as Beck. Its faintly exotic piano hook sits atop a spare machine-generated beat, as Beck’s diction finally returns to its familiar lazy drawl. On “Little One,” experimentalist Britpop cues are front and center. The quiet guitar and subtle background noise of the opening points to Godrich’s work with Radiohead, before the distant, heavily reverbed chorus strongly recalls Gomez.
Despite these easily recognized cues, it is to Beck and Godrich’s credit that Sea Change never feels derivative. The vocals might conjure shades of Nick Drake and the string arrangements might ape George Martin, but no track feels overwhelmed or beholden to these influences. The same holds for the lyrics?for once, one doesn’t get the feeling Beck has let his cleverness get the best of him. There’s nothing on Sea Change nearly as self-consciously outrageous as “Her left eye is lazy / she looks so Israeli / nicotine and gravy.” Beck’s newfound fondness is for lines like “It’s only lies that I’m living / it’s only tears that I’m crying / it’s only you that I’m losing”—low-key, if perfectly forgettable.
On its face, that’s the precisely kind of album Beck has made. But in playing off the success and failures of its predecessors, Sea Change is every bit as compelling as the rest of his oeuvre. And that turns out to be pretty ironic after all.
