Beck’s fifth studio album, 2002’s Sea Change, remains his finest achievement, and I consider it one of the best albums I own. It’s up there with Blood On the Tracks and The Road to Ensenada as one of the greatest break-up albums of all-time.

Stylistically, Sea Change see-sawed back to the somber acoustic mood of Mutations, the polar opposite of the frenzied eclecticism of Midnite Vultures. Both musically and (especially) lyrically, Beck is at his most straight-forward on this album. It’s as if all the genre blending and cryptic lyrics on his previous records were a mask and he’s finally allowing his listeners to look him directly in the eye. And what we see there can best be described as beautiful heartbreak.

Beck gives his most impressive vocal performance yet on Sea Change. It’s hard to believe the man who slurred rhymes about termites choking on splinters is the same man moaning these lines on one early track:

While Sea Change is largely acoustic, its production is far from simple. Producer Nigel Godrich, known for his work on Radiohead’s albums, bathes the songs in atmosphere, using moody strings and keyboards to fill the empty space around Beck’s spare lyrics.

The result is an album both intimate and expansive… it’s the sound of a heart exploding.