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Beck's "Morning Phase" Presents the Honorary "Sea Change 2" Music Writing Awards

Have you heard Beck's new album? Did you know that it sounds like 'Sea Change?'

On September 24, 2002, Beck released Sea Change, a deeply personal album that was in many ways the antithesis of the fractured, weirdo pop music that defined his very Beck-ness. It was an album with a direct lyrical approach about his recent break-up—his was no longer the “so why don’t you kill me?” Beck—and it swapped out Beck’s crate-digging electronic sketches for orchestral arrangements.

The album has rightly been held up as a classic in Beck’s oeuvre—it got a perfect score from Rolling Stone when it was released, an honor usually reserved for Bruce Springsteen—and is the default favorite Beck album of every “serious” person you know. [Ed. note: This is one of my favorite albums.] But it’s also worth noting that the album wasn’t entirely well received; it got totally shredded by the Village Voice, which called it out for being rife with cliché.

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This week, Beck releases Morning Phase, his first new album of songs since 2008. It’s a record that is heavy on introspection and acoustic, strummy California country rock. In other words, it sounds an awful lot like the second coming of Sea Change. Sea Change: Reloaded, if you will. The press release that went out announcing the release of Morning Phase did little to dispel this idea, calling it a “companion piece of sorts” to Sea Change.

Not coincidentally, Morning Phase is getting more resolutely positive reviews than any Beck album since Sea Change. And if you’ve read any of the reviews that have hit the net in the last week—and I’ve read at least 40—you’ll notice that there is literally not a critic alive that can resist gratuitously mentioning Sea Change. Some are better at writing around the Sea Change comparison than others—Rolling Stone mentions Sea Change right away before moving on immediately—while others had a lot of trouble reviewing Morning Phase without gratuitously mentioning Sea Change.

In honor of the poor, unfortunate souls tasked with reviewing Morning Phase, who had to avoid their basest natures to just write, “it’s Sea Change 2. Listen to it,” and instead had to write reviews that found creative ways of referencing Sea Change. We’re calling these the Commemorative Sea Change 2 Music Writing Awards.

Achievement In Blowing The Sea Change 2 Wad In The Headline
“Beck’s Morning Phase marks a new sea change”—The Guardian

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Achievement In Bending Over Backwards Matrix-Style To Avoid Calling It Sea Change 2 While Calling It Sea Change 2
“To simply call Morning Phase a Sea Change redux and be done with it does Beck and the album a disservice, of course.”—Sputnik Music

Achievement In Ditching The Pretense And Just Going For It
“Sonically, it’s practically Sea Change Part II. Musical choices are almost identical—bells, swelling cinematic strings, ample harmonies—but Hansen’s voice doesn’t sound quite so sad. And given how well this approach went over last time, he would have no reason to be.”—Alternative Press

Achievement In Referencing The Press Release In Order To Justify Calling It Sea Change 2
“I like Beck - everybody likes Beck - but the only record of his that's ever struck a genuine chord with me is Sea Change. Imagine my delight, then, on reading the press release for Morning Phase, which describes this first new album in six years as a 'companion piece' to that very record.”—The 405

Achievement In More Or Less Comparing Morning Phase To Before Sunset
“By its close, the sun has definitely come up on Morning Phase, and any suggestion that it’s simply a retread of Sea Change’s ruminations can be firmly put to bed. It might share some sonic similarities, but it's an altogether brighter beast, built by an older, wiser soul who seems to have been taking a few years to work out exactly where he wants to be as an artist.”—Drowned in Sound

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Achievement In Also Calling It Odelay 2, Maybe? Or Not.
“That Morning Phase is so clearly a sequel — and arguably a slightly updated carbon copy — to Sea Change, Beck’s previous exercise in sad-sackery, makes it hard not to compare the album with the rest of Beck’s discography, as well. Of course, nobody is asking Beck to re-create the collision of the genres he navigated so well in the ’90s.”—Washington Post

Achievement In The Most New Yorker Way To Call It Sea Change 2
“The Beck album being cited as a precursor to Morning Phase is Sea Change, from 2002. Though it is an elegant record, sitting in the warm, mid-tempo range of Los Angeles rock like Crosby, Stills & Nash and Gordon Lightfoot, it has that “Who knows?” quality that can bring Beck’s music down.” New Yorker

Achievement In The Most New Yorker Way To Call It Sea Change 2, Entertainment Weekly Division
“The short answer is that it falls most in line with 2002's Sea Change, evoking a similarly dappled California folk-rock sound. But there's a new kind of hypnosis in the swooning vocals and traveling-poet lyricism here. And the loose lunar theme seems appropriate — the album swells with a gorgeous, twilit wonder.”—Entertainment Weekly

Achievement In Calling It Sea Change 2 In Service Of Saying It’s Not As Good As Sea Change
“But while the new record is unequivocally related to its forebear—it features most of the same players and a strikingly similar sonic palette—there are differences that set it apart, and bring it down…While Beck's technical chops have grown impressively, Morning Phase only proves that he can tackle Sea Change-style production, like he's trying to redraw a masterpiece.”--Pitchfork

Achievement In Beating A Hasty Retreat
Morning Phase makes for an interesting return to form: It’s a jump back to Beck’s chameleonic tendencies, but one that’s been explicitly billed as the companion piece to 2002’s Sea Change. And so it is, at least on the surface…But while Morning Phase handily recalls the folky instrumental vocabulary and crystal clear production of Sea Change, it bears nothing of the latter record’s dour, defeated tone, trading in gloomy moping for an altogether livelier, more pastoral outing.”—Consequence of Sound

Achievement In Eyerolls & Superfluous Anchorman References
“If Beck himself hadn’t described Morning Phase as a companion of sorts to 2002’s Sea Change — he recorded it with many of the same backing musicians — anybody who heard 30 seconds of the record would immediately do so on his behalf. Morning Phase deviates from Sea Change like Anchorman 2 sets itself apart from Anchorman. It is grammatically impossible to be “sadder than sad,” but damn it if Beck doesn’t bend the laws of linguistics on Morning Phase in an attempt to out-frowny-face Sea Change.”--Grantland

Achievement In The Article Itself Being An Implicit Approval Of The Boring Sea Change 2 Music-Crit Party Line
The one you just read on Noisey.

Andrew Winistorfer is currently working on Sea Change 3. He's on Twitter@thestorfer