Everybody's favorite postmodern pop chameleon should have at least a few of his fans scratching their heads this fall when his new studio album, Sea Change (Geffen, September 24), hits stores. He even went so far as to mount a short, semi-unplugged solo tour of seated venues in August to get people used to the new Beck, who's
jettisoned the two-turntables-and-a-microphone approach for acoustic-guitar-based folk-and classic-rock-style tunes. This isn't an entirely unprecedented move for Mr. Hanson -- just three years ago he teamed up with Radiohead producer Nigel Goodrich for the psychedelic-tinged pop of Mutations (Geffen), and way back before that he made a rough-and-tumble acoustic album with K Records honcho Calvin Johnson called One Foot in
the Grave (K).

Sea Change splits the difference between those two discs. Goodrich is back producing, which means the arrangements are warm, tasteful, and anything but lo-fi. And there are Eastern-accented string arrangements that bring to mind the psychedelic side of Mutations. But there's also a lot more of a rootsy vibe to a number of tracks on this generally mellow and often melancholy album, as in twangy bent guitar notes, harmonica and pedal-steel embellishments, fingerpicked acoustic guitars, and one tune that's actually called "Lonesome Tears." So though Sea Change may not be an actual stylistic sea change for Beck, it's enough of a left turn to ensure that no one will be using the word "predictable" to describe him for some time.

Tori Amos has had a few tricks up her sleeve in the past, but the only major change her fans will have to deal with this fall is her switch from Atlantic Records to Epic for her forthcoming Scarlet's Walk (October 29). The disc features the same basic cast she's been touring and recording with for the past few years: bassist Jon Evans and drummer Matt Chamberlain. And rather than delving into guitar rock, it pretty much lets Tori be Tori, which means plenty of aggressive piano playing, cryptic lyrics, and ethereal vocals.

Sinéad O'Connor, on the other hand, is one of those artists who refuses to fall into any pattern; her forthcoming Sean-Nós Nua (October 8) represents a big change in repertoire as well as record labels. She's left Atlantic for Vanguard, which is the perfect outfit for an album of traditional Irish folk songs. And Sean-Nós Nua ("sean-nós" is the traditional nasal style of Irish folk singing; "nua" means "new") finds her in the company of a dozen or so traditional English and Irish musicians performing songs like "Paddy's Lament," the story of a 19th-century Irishman who flees his war-torn homeland and emigrates to America only to find himself conscripted to fight for the North in our Civil War. These numbers are all done in traditional fashion, but Sinéad's unmistakable voice gives them a contemporary feel.

Britpop fans will be happy to hear that after taking a quick left turn into the realm of soundtrack music, the artist who continues to prefer to be known as Badly Drawn Boy is back with his sophomore full-length, Have You Fed the Fish? (ARTISTdirect Records, October 22). The lo-fi overtones of Badly Drawn Boy's Mercury Prize-winning debut are mostly abandoned in favor of crisper production values, heavier guitars, and hooks that your ears won't have to work so hard to find. That's not to imply that the album doesn't have its retro eccentricities -- just that they're likely to have you thinking of Badly Drawn Boy as England's answer to Guided by Voices.

Elsewhere in Britpop land, the Verve's former bassist and guitarist, Simon Jones and Simon Tong, have teamed up to form a new and Verve-like band called the Shining. With a new vocalist (Duncan Baxter) in place, and a harder-hitting drummer (Mark Heaney) who sounds as if he were trying to channel the spirit of John Bonham, the Shining are at times on their debut, True Skies (Epic, September 24), more raucous than the Verve, but Tong hasn't lost his taste for psychedelically textured guitars, or his knack for stepping back to let the vocals lead the way when that's what a song calls for. They probably won't be sampling the Rolling Stones any time soon, but other than that the Shining are a reasonably good replacement for the Verve.

Krist Novoselic is the one Nirvana member who after his first post-Nirvana project seemed better suited to a career in politics than in music. But now he's hooked up with a trio with a lot of potential: Eyes Adrift have Novoselic on bass, former Meat Puppets frontman Curt Kirkwood on guitar and vocals, and ex-Sublime member Bud Gaugh drumming. Given that all three have lost bands to heroin addiction, you wouldn't want to make any bad drug jokes around them. However, their homonymous spinART debut (September 24) suggests that they've all ended up in the right support group. At times they sound like the laid-back Meat Puppets of the '80s, yet there are more than enough musical surprises to keep the disc from coming across as the Meat Puppets mark III. Maybe a career in music isn't such a bad idea for Novoselic after all.

Alterna-country fans have a trio of fine rootsy discs to look out for. At the top of the heap is the new Steve Earle album Jerusalem (Artemis, September 24), which, in typical Steve Earle fashion, doesn't shy away from stirring up controversy. That's right, this is the disc with "John Walker's Blues," the song about the American Taliban dude every politician loves to hate. Leave it to Earle, never a guy to go with the flow, to try to pinpoint what would make a person leave the comforts of what he calls in the title of another song "Amerika" for the wilds of Afghanistan. Let's just hope this one song doesn't overshadow the rest of the album, which is full of some of Earle's best songwriting since he got his life back together.

Also out on September 24 is a new disc by former Whiskeytown frontman Ryan Adams. His label, Lost Highway, isn't calling Demolition the official follow-up to Adams's Lost Highway solo debut, Gold. Instead, it's being described as a collection of "13 songs previously recorded over the course of the past 10 months" -- which would seem to mean that Adams has re-recorded a bunch of tunes that he wrote during those years he was supposed to be putting out Whiskeytown albums and becoming a big star. Anyway, the release is too well produced to be a collection of demos, but apparently it's not polished enough to stand in as his sophomore solo effort, so I guess we can just call it disc 1.5 for Adams and wait to see what he's got up his sleeve for the real sophomore CD.

And finally on September 24, we'll see the release of Old 97's frontman Rhett Miller's first-ever solo album, The Instigator (Elektra). This is definitely the least overtly rootsy of the trio, thanks in part to the presence of producer Jon Brion, the pop mastermind who's done wonders for the likes of Aimee Mann and Fiona Apple. Still, Miller's Texas roots are plainly audible, and alterna-country has come to encompass such a wide range of styles that even the poppiest tunes don't defy any real genre conventions.

For those of you looking for something brand new on the pop horizon, Capitol finally released the major-label debut by Chicago's OK Go this week. The much buzzed-about foursome apparently like to think of themselves as glam-pop, but Weezer fans are going to notice some appealing similarities to the kind of big-hooks, big-guitar rock that Rivers Cuomo sort of reinvented on "The Blue Album" and then revisited on "The Green Album." Let's just say that OK Go would be a nice match for Weezer as the opening act on that band's next tour.

Of course, there are also plenty of tried and true artists with discs ready for fall release, as well as some modern-rock hitmakers who will get their chance to prove that the first time was no fluke. Jakob Dylan's got his Wallflowers back in gear for the October 8 release of their new Red Letter Days (Interscope), which sounds, well, like another Wallflowers disc. Same goes for Tom Petty's next disc with the Heartbreakers, The Last DJ (Warner Bros., October 8), which really isn't a bad thing. It does appear that the late Jeff Buckley's vault will have been fully raided once Evolver Entertainment (a Knit Media company) releases Songs to No One 1991-1992 (October 15), a disc Buckley recorded with former Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas when he was still trying to figure out what kind of band he wanted to put together. Buckley was never happy with these recordings, it's reported, but the disc does feature cool early versions of "Grace" and "Mojo Pin."

In the "Believe It or Not" file, there's an album by Marc Almond and Dave Ball, better known as Soft Cell, coming out on October 8: it's called Cruelty Without Beauty (Cooking Vinyl/spinART). And, finally, in the category of albums I can neither deny the existence of nor comment on without sounding cruel, we've got Lifehouse's Stanley Climbfall (DreamWorks) out this week; Nine Days' So Happily Unsatisfied (Epic) (released September 17; Tonic's Head On Straight (Universal) on September 24; Len's We Be Who We Be, which at least has a funny title, out on DreamWorks on October 8; and the Juliana Theory's Epic debut, Love, out on October 22.

Mr. Lif will appear at LupoÕs on Thursday, September 19 with El-P, RJD2, Cage, Copywrite, and DJ Fakts One. Call (401) 272-LUPO.

Issue Date: September 20 - 26, 2002