Old news
By Mike McGuirk

I LIKE BECK . I have no interest in buying his records anymore, but at least the guy has made being a rock star seem appealing again, and that hasn't been the case for a long time, if you ask me. Does anybody really want to be a rock star these days? I would rather sink into the oblivion offered by street drugs than submit to the shit-mongering monkey tasks rock stars have to perform. Good god. To go through the motions of fake-ass "cool" Lenny Kravitz goes through and write songs about Sept. 11 – you would just lose yourself altogether. And that, if you think about it, would be the saddest loss of all.

But Beck seems like he kind of has the whole thing figured out: he doesn't kiss ass to Sprite, he's not on an MTV reality show yet, and whatever Satan-controlled label he works for lets him put out one bad record after another, with complete artistic control. That's respectable; Beck's a cool guy.

The scary thing is that in light of all that, his girlfriend dumped him, which is just nuts. I mean, here's a fabulously wealthy guy who has the coolest thrift store threads money can buy; he can break-dance, and he used to really matter to a lot of people. I guess that for some, having the whole world is not enough. Anyway, taking a cue from dead-kid dad Eric Clapton, young man Beck Hansen has taken the lemons god gave him and made lemonade! Hooray for the record-buying public! The result is Sea Change, a '70s lite-rock, countryish album.

The first song ("The Golden Age") is pretty, with a "Wild Horses" feel that lasts for a good 16 seconds before these tinkly-tinkle sounds comes in and you think maybe Peter Pan is trying too hard. "Guess I'm Doing Fine" is OK; it really almost sounds like a great B.J. Thomas song, but then there are all these other songs. One reminds me of something by Nick Drake and is disgusting, seven of them sound like Radiohead, and the last one I didn't listen to because you know what? It's bullshit, and this music is irrelevant. It sounds like a record that came out in the '70s, except those were good and this sucks. Burmese is better. If Beck were more like Burmese, or Lightning Bolt, or even Andrew W.K., he'd be better and he wouldn't be irrelevant. Who is this album for? It's not even for the kids – that's Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit. This is for the "alternative music" crowd. Sheesh. They're the next baby boomers.

People are touting this as a "statement" from Beck about how he's a serious musician who can write songs that aren't just jokes with samples and beats – that he can reveal himself, as he's done here. But if Beck is choosing to expose the real, nonironic musician who's gonna melt all our hearts, why is Sea Change as much a reanimation of some smackily funny music from a long-gone America as any of his last couple of records? The only difference between this and the potentially racist Prince-iness of Midnite Vultures is that here he uses the medium of '70s singer-songwriter, mellow, getting-laid music to deliver his message instead of fake funk and semi-hip hop. He hasn't put out a record that sounded new since Odelay.

The problem I have is that I am always expecting Beck to save music somehow, as if he's going to put out a record that is as enduring and great as something from rock's golden period. The truth is, he is just another rock star, with enough talent to make a great single now and then but not enough to make him the next Van Morrison. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just too bad the perennially brightest spot on the horizon is really only good at rehashing the past.