Even among the more curious singles released in the early ’90s – Detachable Penis by King Missile, and anything by Cake or Ween – Beck Hansen’s breakthrough single Loser struck listeners as enticingly strange when it first appeared on Triple J playlists and the ABC’s Rage circa 1993.

Quickly dubbed the “slacker generation’s anthem”, its loose collision of loping hip-hop beats, stream-of-consciousness rap, Son House-style folk-blues guitar and Portastudio production values seemed to look backwards and forwards simultaneously.

But the youthful Beck was never really a slacker. Beneath the thrift-store image was a musician of formidable depth and eclecticism. And it didn’t come out of nowhere: what most of us Rage watchers didn’t know at the time was that Beck was the son of prolific arranger and Hollywood composer David Campbell.

On the back of that first single, Beck built a career that constantly shifted shape, from the sample-heavy Odelay to the funk of Midnite Vultures and the bruised melancholy of 2002’s Sea Change. This Sydney Opera House Concert Hall event – backed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under conductor Nicholas Buc – leans heavily into the latter album’s lushly introspective mood.