All those reinventions, genre-clashes, breakdancing and Gen X irony can take it out of a person. So it’s little surprise that every twelve years Beck returns to a safe place, a familiar terrain, where he can work through difficult emotions with trusted musicians. There’s no pressure to show off, innovate or get crazy with a processed cheese spread.
Sea Change, Beck’s eighth album, established this more sombre space in 2002. It was folky like 1994’s One Foot in the Grave and ’98’s Mutations, but different too: a dead serious, dead slow, dead melancholy mix of acoustic guitars, strings and a Gallic-funk rhythm section, it found a bruised Beck channelling his heartache over the end of a nine-year relationship. Sea Change confused…
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…Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometime is Beck’s first compilation since 2000’s B-sides set Stray Cat Blues and features two previously unreleased recordings – solo acoustic covers of Hank Willams’ ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart’ and Daniel Johnston’s ‘True Love Will Find You in the End’.