Issue date: 10/11/02 Section: Entertainment

First impressions are tough. At least with a bad first impression, you can make up for your previous mistakes, but when you start out as strong and charming as rock superstar Beck did in the mid-90's, even the slightest misstep can have fans and critics alike pining away for the musician of yesteryear.

Not wanting to sound like a jaded, aging, and sad hipster with his arms crossed saying "his older stuff was better," allow me to say this now: the new Beck album, Sea Change is good. Really good.

On his seventh album proper, Beck puts aside his trademark nursery rhyme lyrics for introspective and thoughtful ones. The music is the logical next step from Beck's earlier Mutations, a Mutations version 1.1 if you will. The guitars, the melancholy feeling, the incessantly depressing lyrics about lost love- this is definitely Beck's alt-country album.

This album should be right up my alley since I'm such a fan of depressing music. I like music that I can heavily drink alone to in the corner of my room with all the lights off, but it's not working this time. Why isn't it? Many comparisons have been made between Beck and eels front man "E," Mark Oliver Everett. Although these comparisons usually involve the fact that E is still in Beck's shadow with little hope of stepping out of it. Anyone read a few years ago that ol' E bought the house Beck sold when he got rich and famous? Did anyone else find that appropriate and/or hilarious?

While Beck was this hyperactive fresh faced kid with tongue firmly placed in cheek, E was kicking out jam after jam about his dead family and cancer as a cure.

On Sea Change, Beck seems to finally be taking a page out of E's book, as he produces his most depressing album of his career. It's not just the most depressing album of his career either. It may be one of the most depressing alt-country albums to date. On this album, Beck muses, "Already dead to me now/ 'cuz it feels like I'm watching something dying." You can tell that this time, a girl done that boy wrong. With lyrics like "It's only lies that I'm livin'/ it's only tears that I'm cryin'/ It's only you that I'm losin'/ I guess I'm doin' fine," one starts to wonder that maybe that fresh faced kid is just getting old.

Of course, there is a trend in rock music that for a musician to grow up and "mature," he must put out a downbeat, personal album. This is Beck getting mature. He even employs an old man voice like Robert Pollard did in Guided By Voices' Isolation Drills. You know, I think Beck and Bobby Pollard are kind of alike too. I thought they would be seemingly forever young. So what to make of Sea Change? If this album had been recorded by many other artists, it'd be an above average record with lots of promise attached to it. Beck seems to be like a lot of people. Luckily, he's not Connor Oberst, so for my money, that's what makes him great. Unfortunately, this album was recorded by the same guy who brought us One Foot in the Grave, Mellow Gold, and Odelay. Hopefully this won't be the end of that boyish Beck we all know and love.

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