In my first and second year of university, I ‘worked’ as a host on the uni’s radio station. Had my own show, two hours long, put a lot of effort into what my playlist would be. You can find them here. They’re under a lot of names: Sunday Morning Show, Tuesdays with Jamie K, Saturday Rocks… it’s all me. The reason I tell you this is because for those years I spent a lot of time downloading albums to my iTunes library to increase the variety of music I played on my slot. Beck’s Sea Change was one of them. From the small amount of ‘research’ I did back then I saw that it was considered to be the man’s second best album after Odelay on besteveralbums.com, so it was probably worth the amount of space on my laptop. I listened to it once, but didn’t really take it in. My shows were the main focus at the time.

I revisited the album earlier last year and came to the conclusion that it was really good. Definitely didn’t get the ‘delete from computer’ selection that a lot of other albums did. There’s a lot of acoustics and a warmth to its sound throughout that was probably further aided by the production tricks of Nigel Godrich. The mood of the album was a lot more sincere and introspective compared to his usual cryptic and offbeat material, influenced by Beck’s state of mind after a the break-up of a nine-year relationship. ‘The Golden Age’ and ‘Already Dead’ got instant likes from me. ‘Lonesome Tears’ did too. The lyrics are very relatable, and the music – very intense.

Beck sings about the tears he’s been crying, presumably since his relationship ended, and aims to put an end to these crying bouts because there’s no point in doing so if the person you care for doesn’t reciprocate those feelings. That doesn’t stop him from wondering why he could have been done so wrong during choruses though. His vocal is really dry, very intimate, and sounds like he’s really close to the microphone when singing. This is juxtaposed with the expansive string arrangement (arranged by Beck’s dad) that take up the soundscape, and pretty much drown out Beck when those choruses hit. Those strings are most definitely the highlight of the track, truly capturing the emotional distress that’s conveyed in the lyrics before the climactic ending where they climb and climb endlessly before coming to an abrupt end. I had to add the song to the phone just for those parts.