Beck

Odelay

Best Beck Ever

Review Score:

(10/10)
I remember back when the movie "Ghostbusters" first came out...then was re-released to theatres...but somehow I never got to go see it during those times. In the meantime, I kept hearing hype everywhere about how fantastic it was, how much people loved it, how hilarious it was and how much my friends all drooled with excitement over it. But when it finally got to home video and I *was* able to check it out, I just didn't find it funny or even vaguely interesting. Everything I had heard about it had simply raised my expectations SO high that letdown was inevitable. I'm afraid the same has happened here with Beck's "Odelay".

I had heard whispers about this guy Beck and this album back around the time it was released, but never actually heard it. I simply never got around to it (partially because the album seemed so trendy at the time and partially because the cover was so blah and ugly...not that one should judge an album by its cover, but this cover was SO blah and ugly that it really turned me off). I finally heard Beck for the very first time when he released "Midnite Vultures", and I fell in love with that album. With its great songs, groovy experimentation and quirky 70s bent, it became one of my favorites.

After getting "Midnight Vultures", I then checked out "Stereopathic Soul Manure" and "Mutations". The first one went back and forth from country experimentations to bizarre avante-garde grooves, and I loved that. The second went for a sort of Beatlesque folk approach, and I loved it as well. I was really getting into Beck now, and after discovering all this other material I expected "Odelay"--which was being raved about by both my friends and the press--to be a knockout.

Instead, "Odelay" turned out to be a collection of songs which were very well-done and clever but, oddly, as a whole were unsatisfying to me as an album. I had expected so much more from this recording by this point that... well, maybe letdown was inevitable.

Now don't get me wrong, I do love this album and think it's great. I really do. It's just that...well, it's hard to put a finger on...I guess the best way to put it is to say that each song on here is set at almost the exact same tempo. Not slow enough to be considered "ballad" speed but not fast enough to be considered danceable, it keeps its medium-paced mood throughout the entire recording.

Let me put it this way. The avant-garde band Mr. Bungle created music that deliberately shifted from slow to fast with each new passage and as a result persistently grabbed your attention. Beck does the exact opposite here on "Odelay". I never before thought it was possible to take so many different styles of music and use the cut-and-splice asthetic to form them all into material that was so steadily paced.

As a result, there's plenty of variety in the musical styles but next to no variety in the timing. And after a while, the album starts to sound (dare I say it?) monotonous and boring. I haven't been able to get through a full listening of this entire disc without nodding out.

Now maybe I'm missing something here. Maybe Beck intended it to sound like one huge collage, maybe it's all supposed to sound like it's all one long track. But after the ultracool "Midnite Vultures" and other CDs I heard from him, I was really let down. This doesn't come across as being an "album" to me so much as an "extended single".

I recall another reviewer here giving the disc one star and stating that the disc was boring. Maybe what I'm describing here was what that person was trying to get across--if you don't mind it all sounding the same rhythmwise, then sure, check it out. But if you want cool beats or wild experimentation, check out Beck's other material. This one actually comes across as sounding to my ears as the most commercial of all his discs I've heard so far.

I'm sorry, Beck. I still love your disc. But that's the reaction I got from it, I'm afraid.

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