Beck

Odelay

What exactly is the appeal of this guy?

Review Score:

(2/10)
I'm in more or less total agreement with Janitor-X's 10/5/04 statement that this is basically a pile of pop culture detritus regurgitated and cut-and-pasted in a nonsensical way. Let me add some of my own thoughts.

I love strange music, but Beck's works are just a mess. Anyone with a substantial record collection and random instruments could throw something like Odelay together in a few days. This is part of Beck's "ironic" and "quirky" shtick (two concepts that are often and pretentiously abused in the world of indie rock) along with his completely nonsensical lyrics and flat, monotonal talk-singing (calling it "rapping," as far as I'm concerned, is an insult to every respectable MC out there). Basically his inspiration is the masterful Dust Brothers production job on the '89 Beastie Boys album Paul's Boutique, which was a thousand times better at achieving the "pop culture thrown in a blender" thing (copyright laws have made any attempt to usurp that album's throne impossible, at least in the sampling realm). Turntablists like DJ Shadow also do similar material, to much better effect.

Odelay comes off as an amateurish and sonically busy copy of that sound, masking any lack of soul and originality, genuine inspiration, and lyrical statement in favor of an unbearable forced irony and weirdness. And then you have the fact that Beck seems to try to "reinvent" himself with every album, but it comes off as an attempt to stay trendy rather than any sort of honest artistic progression.

Nonetheless, Beck is still the darling of indie music critics and media outlets such as Pitchfork, for reasons I still cannot entirely fathom; the existence of musicians like Mr. Bungle (and Mike Patton in general), Secret Chiefs 3, Frank Zappa, Soul Coughing, and the aforementioned hip-hop artists, all of whom blend humor, ecclecticism, innovation, and musical talent seamlessly, render Beck and his entire catalog obsolete.

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