The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Beck

[#] Sea Change (2002)

Gorgeous and sad, gorgeous and sad.

Reviewed January 5, 2022

(This is an album that was previously covered on the Rediscovering! Click the link in the table to read my first impressions, or read on for how they might have changed.)

A breakup was as good a reason as any to write a breakup record, but Beck had an ace up his sleeve: his background in the blues and country. This is Beck's indie rock take on "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry", thankfully with no bitter gnashing or absorbed wallowing like you'd expect from a breakup record in tow. Better yet, it's in technicolor—Radiohead's favorite producer Nigel Godrich worked on this one, and it's a feast for the ears. The rounded, brilliantly full acoustic guitars and the layers of strings, glockenspiels, and Wurlitzers spread across the aural canvas like wash brushes, the repetitive fingerpicking like mulled over bad thoughts the knife marks over top.

Sea Change can be divided into thirds, with the heaviest aching coming in the first leg with "The Golden Age", growing more introspective with "It's All in Your Mind", and warming to living another day by "Sunday Sun". These songs aren't especially complex, but it's the little things in the arrangements, the beating in your ears to bring forth the titular lonesome tears or the exhausted refrain of "I'm tired of fighting for a lost cause", that give them their power. I still think that Mutations is a little more consistently interesting (a damp, sedated squib like "Paper Tiger" so early in the tracklist is patience-testing), but I don't begrudge anyone considering this their favorite Beck album or even his best—it's downright arresting more often than it isn't.

Essential:	"The Golden Age", "Lonesome Tears", "It's All in Your Mind"
Quintessential:	"Lost Cause"
Non-Essential:	"Paper Tiger"
Rating:
Further listening:	Sea Change's Rediscovering entry