Beck

Odelay

I have seen the future...and it is Beck.

Review Score:

(8/10)
When you were a kid, did you ever mix a whole bunch of household ingredients together into a mad scientist milkshake and then dare everybody to try a sip? Maybe Beck did that a lot as a kid. As he emerges as an artist, it is fairly impossible to stick him into any genre. Beck takes hip-hop, rap, country-western, funk, techno-dance and alternative rock and blends it all into a strangely bizzare mix. Only a real genius and talent could blend those styles together into one delicious concoction.

"Where It's At" might be the best song I've heard in ten years. I still can't figure out how he fused country-western rock with early 80's breakdancing hip-hop. The rest of the album is full of creative songs like "Devils Haircut" and "The New Pollution." The album slows down near the last few songs and it doesn't really end on a high note, which is why I could only manage 4 stars for this album. Take off a couple of songs from this record, and I might have given it six stars, though. This isn't Beck's masterpiece...that's probably going to come many, many years and albums later.

Nobody, but nobody is making music as wildly inventive as Beck Hansen. In ten years, people will talk about how he influenced the artists of the day and changed music as we know it. When we're surrounded by so many sacharine clones passing themselves off as musicians, its so refreshing to hear Beck create something so original and different from everything else.

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