Indie Rocker vs Classic Rocker
In this installment the boys give Beck's Seachange and Marvin Gaye's Here, My Dear a right drubbing.
Indie Rocker -- I gotta admit; I didn’t think he had it in him.
Not to sound like a cantankerous old classic rocker, but if you had told me that Beck -- our Beck, Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky Beck, creator of that early 90’s ode to slackerdom, “Loser” --had written a break-up album (and more importantly, a breakup album worth listening to) I probably would have asked for a sample of whatever it was that you happened to be on. And it’s not because he didn’t possess the talent. Hardly. The guy had been blipping and beeping and sampling and scratching interesting tidbits for the better part of the 90’s. It’s just that he always seemed wrapped up in that post 80’s cynicism; the sign o’ the times; that threadbare cloak of rhetoric that we call irony. And really, why lay your fears out for the masses to reject when you’ve got a good thing going? But he did. And for some reason, despite that initial skepticism that I had, that nagging feeling that borders on Peanuts-esque neuroticism (as if Beck, playing the Lucy Van Pelt to my Charlie Brown, would yank the football away and reveal a soulless album ghostwritten by a legion of hollow-eyed Scientologists) I can sit here and say that I really enjoy this album. Mellow Gold was uneven but entertaining. Odelay was worth the hype. But this?
In what is one of the more pleasing (if not surprising) transformations of an artist within the past decade, the aptly named Sea Change, documents yet another stylistic curveball in the Beck canon. From “The Golden Age” to “Side of the Road” the subject matter never strays from the main topic of broken relationships, while the mood and tempo, contrary to the album’s title, stay the course with the unwavering dedication of a loyal hound. Of course, as in all great albums, the production glimmers with understated sonic nuances and the musicians deserve credit for not overstepping their boundaries, allowing Beck to run free with images of heartbreak and loss while dulling the sharp edges of any potentially sappy lyrics. It is here where producer Nigel Godrich (of Radiohead fame) shines while serving as the perfect counterpoint to Beck’s isolation, letting the instrumentation alternate; to follow -- and on the rare occasion, lead -- depending on the song. If there is any irony to be found in the release it’s with the atmospheric arrangements that give the listener an aural glimpse of how records were back in the days of AM radio, specifically Gordon Lightfoot’s “Summertime”, which isn’t surprising considering that Beck has mined that era for pretty much his whole career. But it’s Godrich’s treatment of strings and percussion that give the album a haunting vibe, as if working in tandem with the ghost of Beck’s shipwreck of a relationship, affecting each contributor’s approach to every song.
Classic Rocker – Kurt, for you to suddenly sound like a classic rocker could only improve the quality of your conversation. At the very least it would guarantee fewer references to Slanted & Enchanted in your daily chatter which, I feel certain, would 1) add some much-needed credibility to your role as a rock critic, and 2) possibly prevent that glassy-eyed plummet-into-unconsciousness look so prevalent in the listeners to your particular spiel.
But this isn’t about you, it’s about Beck. And it pains me to do so, but I (mostly) agree with you on this one. Like you, I just didn’t see this album coming. In retrospect, however, it shouldn’t have been such a surprise to hear such a lowkey, emotional record from the posterboy for suburban slackerdom. Afterall, he’d released One Foot in the Grave right after Mellow Gold struck, well, gold. A good bit of that little gem is spent in the rural hinterlands doing fair justice to old Skip James tunes which is really saying something. It was the first indication that Beck wasn’t just some goofball with a dimestore guitar and a flair for the sonic trappings of hip hop. Then, yes, there was Odelay and it seemed like you couldn’t throw a copy of Nevermind without hitting someone who thought it was one of the truly great records of our time. But once again, right after a big shiny succesful album with hit singles galore, Beck retreated a little and released Mutations which was a subtle, muted record; very underrated. Then came the big Prince/James Brown pastiche, Midnite Vultures, a record as big, brash and danceable as Mutations was monochromatic and insular. The pattern was set.
And yet neither of us expected this record.
I guess that actually has very little to do with the sound of the record. After every kicky, goodtime record/large palette album, Beck reins it all in, turns the lights down, dons a cardigan and gets all sensitive. But that softer emotional quality still had it’s tongue in irony’s ear. Those songs still had some cognitive dissonance between the hushed tone of the tunes and the cut-up style of the lyrics. Sea Change doesn’t follow those same rules. Beck shelves the irony for this one album, and for this one album only, and writes a consistent song cycle that curls around the desolation of a ruined relationship. It may not be a break-up album of the quality and depth of Blood on the Tracks or Pet Sounds, but it comes within a hairsbreadth of those greats. All the while fending off Nigel Godrich’s ham-fisted attempts at ruining the whole thing.
I’m no lo-fi apologist. I like a well-produced recording with lots of texture and a good round feeling to the mix. But on this record, I wish Beck would have handled the production duties on his own. Undoubtedly, we’d still have all the mechanical bips and bleeps, and the shushing, rolling atmospherics, and sharp interjections of distortion. All of these elements, while I fear may eventually date this record, all of Beck’s records actually, it’s the cloying, hardhat string arrangements that occasionally cross the line from merely being inferior to the rest of the elements on the album to being a wrecking ball of literalness bashing at the understated song structures. Check out the strings on Paper Tiger like exclamation points run wild across a beautifully composed page of prose. The strings are big, intrusive, and bland. Those three adjectives relate to no other aspect of the record. Have a listen to Lonesome Tears where the Godrich builds a supply-closet ladder out of the strings. I want to say he’s creating an homage to the final seconds of A Day in the Life, but what would be the point of doing such a thing with this particular song. This motion will happen again later in the record and it will be more successful because it caps with raging dissonant feedback, a better conveyance for romantic frustration than these chock-a-block fiddles can manage.
Indie Rocker- Kris, your snarky comments are exactly what I’d expect from a third rate book critic who mistakenly believes that his readership is composed of something other than rheumy-eyed retirees who stumble upon his column while engaged in a futile attempt to find the crossword puzzle. But hey, if it keeps ‘em off the roads then here’s to many more years of you taking up valuable advertising space.
Listen, I realize that like most classic rockers you’re probably still worked up over Estelle Getty’s passing (Even though I always saw you as a Bea Arthur fan. Sorry, I just see you as a guy who likes his elderly women, well, on the mannish side.), so I’m gonna let your criticisms of the arrangement themselves slide. But how can you say that the strings in Paper Tiger are like “exclamation points” and then say that they’re “bland”? Way to contradict yourself. There might be only three people reading this thing, but one of them is me, so at least put forth some effort. And to put the onus on Nigel for the string arrangement is ridiculous. To presume that Beck sat back and let Godrich have carte blanche is erroneous (and never mind that you could find an overbearing instrument/string passage/etc somewhere in the mix of every album created since the advent of recording). One need only watch a YouTube posting of Tom Cruise bouncing around with wide-eyed lunacy on a couch or arrogantly shouting down a morning talk show host to know that Scientologists don’t take shit from nobody, least of all some limey music producer. I don’t care if Godrich helped create some of the most enduring sounds of the last 20 years. He ain’t L. Ron Hubbard.
Classic Rocker – Kurt, you make a very good point. I am a professional paid to write reviews that appear in the newspaper which are then picked up and reprinted in various other publications and websites. You are an amateur. Aside from myself you basically have no readership at all. Thanks for making that clear to anyone who stumbles across this column.
I was lax in my castigation of Nigel Godrich for the hamfisted arrangements that plague Sea Change. The guy who wrote and conducted this crap is named Richard Campbell, and I hope in whatever backwater community center orchestra this hack has landed Mr. Campbell is truly ashamed of what he committed to tape, or digital whatsis, on this otherwise very fine album.
It’s true that Beck is just as much to blame as Campbell or Nige. My instinct to jump down the throats of those two jokers stems from my belief that Beck is just too savvy, too sophisticated musically to advocate arrangements that sound like hack Hollywood soundtrack detritus. And yes, Kurt, a long series of exclamation points with no other textures present as counterpoint is bland. From the definition of bland: lacking in special interest, individuality, etc.; insipid; dull. Take your pick, buddy, they all apply. Maybe if you actually read a book from time to time you’d know things like that.
But why would Beck endorse these particular arrangements. It gets back to what you were saying about irony. Without the wooly covering of irony there is no distance built into these songs. From Beck to the listener is one clear, straight shot with no interference at all. I think Beck recognized that and it freaked him out. He reveals himself on this record. Listen to his voice, this is a naked performance. As I mentioned earlier, this record didn’t need the big production, the outsized arrangements. This album is all about the man’s voice. He could have simply strummed that old cigarbox guitar of his and sung these songs into a single mic and this record would lose absolutely nothing. To the contrary it would gain so much. Think Pink Moon. Or to return to a cliche Classic Rocker move let’s look at Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. The earliest version of that record is just Bobby and his guitar. The album went through two re-recordings. With each subsequent version Dylan built in more distance (lyrically & arrangement-wise) between himself and the songs and therefore the distance was also between him and the listener. Beck didn’t do that. I think he understood that these particular arrangements in their clunky “feel this emotion now” style created the distance Beck required. If you’re subjected to arrangements that tell you exactly how to feel, that suggest the grandiosity of the emotional subject matter, then the work becomes depersonalized. It becomes a sort of white noise that nothing subtle and human can permeate.Your connection to the subtlety of Beck’s expression (all in the tone of his voice, and damn if he doesn’t give the best vocal performance of his career on this record) is interrupted.
