Word: odelay
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...last date with Beck Hansen, his smash album Odelay, was one of those classic affairs in which everything seemed to go perfectly. God knows we weren't expecting it. Last time we checked, he had been merely a folksy geek with the catchphrase of consummate apathy: "I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill...
Catchy, sure, but do you really want to bring him home to meet the folks? Still, against all odds, on Odelay, Beck managed to pull from his grab bag of idiosyncracies something somehow coherent, edgy and adorable all at the same time. Maybe it was the lovable geeky cowboy thing, or all that talk of him capturing the zeitgeist. Truth be told, we always did grin at that line about him being a loser and he always had been something of a likable maverick. His first album, Mellow Gold, introduced his sound: blending rural rockabilly and urban jangle into...
However, moving from mellow acoustic ramblings into ingenious electronic sound collage, Beck demanded everyone's undivided attention with Odelay. Collaborating with the Dust Brothers-whose everything-but-the-kitchen-sink production methods had already revolutionized the Beastie Boys album Paul's Boutique--Beck crafted an album that sounded like it came from somewhere between Memphis, Manhattan and Mars. The country rambler was still here, but now he was hobnobbing with bubbling psychedelic guitars, booming hip-hop tracks and distorted space-age bleeps. Splashed through with enough classic soul samples to put Stax Records back in business, Odelay was a manifesto...
...With Odelay, his second CD on a major label, Beck proves he has more than one good song in him--in fact, he has a whole musical outlook. Odelay deftly mixes folky acoustic-guitar riffs with atmospheric lyrics and hip-hop samples and beats. One song, the hard-driving Devils Haircut, attacks America's culture of physical vanity as suffocating and inescapable; another, the smooth Where It's At, pays tribute to rap's roots by praising its resourceful spirit...
...Doubt, the ska-punk band Sublime. "Some of the stuff that's big for us lately seems less rock and has more of a beat influence," says Lisa Worden, music director for kroq, an alternative-rock station in Los Angeles. "Beck stays away from the typical rock sound." Odelay isn't a flawless album--Beck isn't as soulful as some of the hip-hop stars he emulates; No Diggity, the simmering single from Dr. Dre and Blackstreet, has more soul than anything on Odelay. But perhaps his hip-hop awkwardness is what draws some critics and rock fans...