Only five tracks from Beck’s new album, Sea Change, were made available to the media, but the meaning of the title seems clear already: He’s traded the eclecticism of Odelay and the smirky postmodernism of Midnite Vultures for country and western telegraphed with the unsmiling sensibility of Johnny Cash. All five songs feature languid acoustic guitar, spacy atmospherics, and woeful lyrics like “There’s one road to civilization / but there’s no road back to you.” But then, who knows? Rumor has it that Beck is still tinkering and that new producers may be brought in to vary the sound.
Sea Change
(Geffen; September 24).