Odelay

Critics of Odelay accuse Beck of being overly indulgent and WAY-overly derivative, but isn't that the whole point of the CD? Beck has stolen the key to Fun Factory and is determined to play with every toy in the building before security throws him out.

Over 13 tracks, Beck (with a big assist from the Dust Brothers) treats us to a music mixer's wet dream, from the chronically hook-y ("Devils Haircut," "The New Pollution," "Where It's At") to the startlingly touching ("Jack-Ass," "Ramshackle") to the just plain silly ("Sissyneck").

Odelay holds its place as one of the essential CD's of the 90's. Years later it still continues to entertain and excite. This is a joyous celebration of music, period . . . and Beck's best album by far.


blech   June 17, 2004
 2 out of 3 found this review helpful

This album is overrated. I put it on, and the first impression I got was that Beck really wanted to make a "cool" album.. and he and his producer thought that in order to do this, the songs shouldn't make any sense, there should be few melodies, and the production should be wacky and aloof. It sounds like it's trying way too hard, and I couldn't enjoy any of it.


So Much Was Made of So Little   June 3, 2004
 0 out of 1 found this review helpful

Is this album, called groundbreaking and classic when it was released, going to matter to anyone in 10 years? Of course not.

ODELAY was embraced at a time when American culture was drenched in irony and pop-culture regurgitation. Not surprisingly, the ironic-nostalgia fad ran SO deep that no one stopped to think about how the music would age once the retro-waves it was riding crashed on the sand...hence the blind worship of this record.

Beck also benefited from the bizarre notion that "blending styles" was an inherently noble act. Didn't matter if the styles were blended clumsily. It was all about the musical blender, man. Basically, it was multi-culturalism dogma creeping into the music scene, and the results weren't pretty.

Once rocks fans clear their heads of all the bad irony and musical crossbreeding forced on them in the past ten years, ODELAY's status is going to take a serious tumble.

That said, the record isn't all bad. "Jack-Ass" is a timeless tune, "Derelict" is damn catchy, and "Novocane" is a nice jolt of adrenaline. Otherwise though, there are a lot of forgettable moments on ODELAY, which precludes it from being deemed a masterpiece.


a nice mix of influences and styles   April 27, 2004
Its pretty hilarious how Beck pulls off rap, or a sort of pseudo-rap. His early attempts at it in his early days, like in the Loser song, are hilarious, but you end up laughing but liking the song too. Well Odelay shows how Beck got better and better at his very diverse unique style of music.

David Rehak
author of "A Young Girl's Crimes"


You must be kidding!   March 17, 2004
 3 out of 4 found this review helpful

I waited a long to buy this (I always loved "...and a microphone"), but what a HUGE disappointment. If you are over forty-four years old and were aware of music since you were ten, don't waste your time on this. This album is the DEFINTION of derivative. I will only listen to it once, because I got tired of writing down each song's obvious original infuence: Strawberry Alarm Clock, Zappa, Country Joe and the Fish, oh my goodness, this guy should be paying these groups royalties for this rip off! What a joke. Album of the year? Puhlease. The original stuff was good... thirty years ago. Why can't we all just move on?