Beck

Odelay

"I'll put it together: It's a strange invitation"

Review Score:

(6/10)
Ah, Odelay! the scrap-pile/loser album of the decade (minus the "loser" single, of course.) It was 1996 and dreary-eyed masses were coming off their 5-year grunge hangover, desperate for anything other than alt-rock. Beck proved the perfect fix, with an ecletic style and some funky music. The critics drooled and all summer long you could here an impossibly distorted "Where it's at" blasting from every car stuck at a stoplight. Or the New Pollution. Or Devil's Haircut. It didn't matter; this was good stuff.

In fact, the entire album is filled to the brim with good stuff: good hooks, good bass lines, good atmosphere. But it's absolutely drenched in schizophrenic details that distract rather than complement. The cell phone blips at the end of Novacane, the 3 or 4 "breakdowns" littering Where It's At, the scream introducing Lord Only Knows...Buried somewhere beneath all of these obscure, smart-@ss samples and off-key freakout flourishes are some great songs, but Beck keeps himself and his listeners too focused on how brilliant he is.

The diversity of genres and decades he pulls from is certainly impressive, but he has no business declaring on the back of the cd cover "je suis un revolutionaire" when he knows Todd Rundgren did this is in '73 and the Beasties in '89. Conclusion: Killer party music? You bet! 90's masterpiece? Move on...

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