Week 29: Beck - Sea Change (2002)

"Full fathom five thy father lies,
Of his bones are coral made,
Those are pearls that were his eyes,
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change,
into something rich and strange”

-          William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”

There are few things in music more difficult than making quiet music sound interesting. Unlike rock or pop, which can fall back on danceable, clappable rhythms to keep people interested, quiet genres like folk or blue jazz must rely on either sheer quality or a hope that the audience is stoned enough to pay attention to anything. By definition, the awe-inspiring, bombastic wall-of-sound techniques of baroque pop are out, as are virtuosic solos and sudden shifts in mood or volume. Quiet music must either focus on maintaining its atmosphere and mood over the entire song or build to a crescendo; there’s little room for the terraced dynamics found in alternative music.

Generally, quiet music is designed to provide a vehicle for the singer. It’s no coincidence that the singer-songwriter genre provides most of the best examples of understated, near-silent songs; even if such songs are often dappled with strings and other instruments, the focus is still almost always on the artist whose name graces the album cover.

While that focus on the singer is present, to some extent, in most Western music, folk, singer-songwriter, and other similar genres are bound by their tendency towards quiet volume. In genres like pop or soul, where the singer is the unquestioned master and ruler, the vocals are allowed to soar in volume and octave to the limits of the singer’s ability. Artists like Roy Orbison, Whitney Houston, and Freddie Mercury used volume and melody to keep the attention of the listener on them during all but the 8-bar intros and solos of their songs. However, that freedom of range isn’t as total in other genres; when changes do happen, they happen slowly.

In quiet genres, the singer must demand attention in other ways, usually through their lyrics. Leonard Cohen, a man often lambasted for possessing almost no vocal range at all, nevertheless commands respect and attention simply through his inventive, beautiful lyrics. Bob Dylan is another case of this, and John Darnielle and Laura Marling are borderline cases.

Alternatively, the singer can command attention through sheer force of personality. Similar to punk music, some folk musicians use the blues technique of leaving in the natural flaws of the human voice in order to make themselves seem more unique. Bob Dylan falls into this category, as does Tom Waits, who has turned this idea into an art-form.

The most obvious method, however, is simple beauty. Plenty of singer-songwriters relied on sheer loveliness in their melodies or voices to reach out to audiences. Singers like Karen Carpenter had considerable range and vocal talent, but they didn’t necessarily use their full range on every song, preferring instead to use their abilities to sing as many different melodies as possible over whole albums rather than single songs. Not only were the melodies on songs such as those lovely, they were also relatively simple compared to the Beatles and Beach Boys inspired complexity of the era. Sheer contrast helped these songs stand out.

Although I consider Sea Change an example of the quiet kind of music I’ve been describing, it follows almost none of the principles I just described. The album, as a whole, has more in common with atmospheric blue jazz than it does with singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, or Joni Mitchell; Beck’s vocals simply aren’t as strong as artists like those. Whatever your opinion on Dylan or Cohen’s voice may be, it’s undeniable that they make up for their short-fallings in range or melody with breathtaking lyrical dexterity. Other artists, such as Laura Marling, combine excellent lyrics with a lovely voice.

Although Beck has been blessed with a vocal style every bit as distinctive as Dylan’s whine or Cohen’s half-croon, he simply doesn’t share their emphasis on lyrics. As with so many other things in music, this weakness is not crippling, as Beck has other strengths he can rely on. A song can be brilliant without excelling in every possible field; indeed, a song that is astonishing in every aspect can seem overstuffed and overbearing, an intimidating work that few can understand, let alone enjoy.

Sea Change’s lyrics tend to be more blues-based, focused on establishing and expressing Beck’s mood and state of mind. Unlike singer-songwriters like Tom Waits or Leonard Cohen, who revel in small, revealing details, or folk musicians like Bob Dylan who thrive on hearty metaphors that double as mood-building poetry, Beck takes a simpler approach. Much like Doug Paisley, the songs on this album are based on expressing the depression and/or discontent of the singer; unlike Paisley’s self-titled debut, these songs aren’t built around the idea of expressing those ideas in a surprisingly restrained fashion. Beck’s goal is to express his frustration with a failed relationship in a relatively straight-forward way: by underlining his sad-sack lyrics with a desolate, melancholy atmosphere.

This is, of course, not a new idea. Frank Sinatra famous ‘sad bastard’ period of albums, which featured titles like No One Cares and Where Are You?, used lush strings and pocket orchestras to emphasize the maudlin lyrics Sinatra chose to grace with his voice.  In a more understated case, Paul McCartney and George Martin used strings to enhance “Yesterday” and “Eleanor Rigby”, providing the template for singer-songwriters for years to come.

Nick Drake’s usage of strings on songs like “Saturday Sun” provide a particularly clear blueprint for Beck’s usage of them on Sea Change. In fact, this debt is outright acknowledged by the song “Sunday Sun”, which seems to depict Beck looking for the sun (“my eyes, they stray again/Looking for a satellite /In the rays of Heaven again”) that Nick Drake saw disappearing into Sunday’s rain (“Saturday's sun/Has turned to Sunday's rain/So Sunday sat/In the Saturday sun/And wept for a day gone by”).

That kind of referencing happens throughout the album, though whether it’s unintentional or not is difficult to discern. Opener “The Golden Age” shows obvious marks from producer Nigel Godrich, better known as the producer for Radiohead, who seems to have used the song to work out the habits he established with that band. “Paper Tiger”, the most bizarre sounding song on the album, thanks to heavily layering, seems to quote Serge Gainsbourg’s “Ballade de Melody Nelson”, especially in the halting electric guitar riffs that appear in between verses.

In a manner befitting its aquatic title, Sea Change doesn’t rely on any one element of the music to carry any given song. Instead, these songs focus on creating a kind of foggy atmosphere; when I listen to this album, my focus bounces through the songs freely, without ever necessarily settling on one thing. Rather than the sharp vocal focus found on songs like “Suzanne” or “The Times They Are A-Changin’”, many of the songs on Sea Change seem to lack focus altogether, preferring a watery muddle.

The atmosphere presented by Sea Change is one of stillness, the barren period of ‘in-between’ where you’re stuck simply keeping watch for the next phase of your life to begin. This is evidence by the title, which has its origins in the Shakespeare quote at the top of the page, and is taken from a lyric in “Little One”: “In a sea change nothing is safe”. Clearly, Beck envisions a sea change not as a discrete moment in time but as something that must be lived through. Whether or not that change will eventually be for the better is irrelevant for this album, as Beck is concerned solely with the experience of living through the occurrence of it happening.

While this idea may be stated the clearest on “Guess I’m Doing Fine” with the line, “I just wade the tides that turned /Till I learn to leave the past behind,” the idea of waiting for something to happen is stamped on almost all of the album, from the lyrics to the music. Lyric-wise, “Already Dead” offers a rousing chorus of ,“Already dead to me now/Already dead to me now/'Cause it feels like I'm watching something dyin',” and “End Of The Day” offers the similarly cheery chorus, “I've seen the end of the day come too late/Seen the love you had turning into hate/Had to act like I didn't even care/But I did so I got stranded standing there.” Note in both the emphasis on the idea of waiting around idly rather than getting something done. The slow burn so inherent to quiet music also adds to the overall theme, and “It’s All In Your Mind” goes so far as to repeat its own title nine times, furthering the idea of being stuck in a loop.

That Sea Change manages to make a depiction of indecision and halted progress so interesting is a testament to Beck’s ability as a songwriter. While it may be tempting to read criticism into my comments about Beck’s vocals not being the centerpiece of this album, it’s important to realize that the song lyrics and lead melody are not his only contributions to the album. Regardless of the assistance Beck received in the composition and performance of the songs on Sea Change, the work, as a whole, is an expression of his will as an artist and performer, and should be understood as such. The best solo artists are able to speak through the voices of their peers, either in unison with their own voice or in supplement to it.