Beck

In a nut, Sea Change is an extension of the enervated singer-songwriter vision that Beck Hansen sketched out in 1998 on Mutations, still his best album. It’s a welcome switch from the microchip funk of his last album, Midnite Vultures, and the desert-bleached ennui of the music—think Nick Drake meets Gram Parsons—matches nicely with the bleak lyrics, which sound as if Beck recently emerged from an emotional wringer of a bad relationship. Like Mutations, Sea Change was produced by Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Pavement, Travis), who augments the atmospheric backing tracks—they range from sparse acoustic guitar (“The Golden Age,” “Paper Tiger,” the classic “Lost Cause” and more) to lush orchestrations (“Lonesome Tears”)—with occasional baubles of ear candy. The problem is that by the final two cuts of this 12-song set (“Little One” and “Side of the Road”), the wind-down into torpor is complete. Too bad.