Beck – Sea Change

On Beck Hansen’s fifth album, you can feel the meticulous layers of his unique musical approach—the absurdist lyrics, the hyperactive audio collage, the wry post-modernism—falling away. Made amid the wreckage of his breakup with long-term partner Leigh Limon, Sea Change is just that: a directional shift to emotionally raw balladry. “The Golden Age” evokes dawn-lit desolation, while “Guess I’m Doing Fine” wrings an affecting acoustic miracle from an almost bottomless melancholy.