Consumer Guide Album

Beck: Sea Change [DGC, 2002]
How painful the calculation to become sincere, how arduous the labor to find one's ease. Nobody's saying he isn't talented, and there are some fetching tunes here. But when the most impressive thing about slow songpoetry is the string writing, somebody doesn't have his heart in it, and even if it's not his fault 'cause he doesn't have one, his dolor ends up as cold as his funk. For some that's the idea--a little affectlessness helps the prettiness go down. But whatever irony diehards believe, emotion and intelligence aren't mutually exclusive. Any argument to the contrary calls for active resistance. B