CD Review: Beck’s ODELAY
Beck: Odelay (Deluxe Edition): 4 Stars
Beck’s second major label album, Odelay, was released in 1996 – just as some of my friends were working on wrecking their first cars and hunting down their first girlfriends. I vaguely remember having someone drive me to a Handy Dandy to meet up with a radio station van that was running a live feed. I’d won an advance copy of Beck’s then unreleased classic album over the phone, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. I’d been a fan of grunge, hip-hop and classic rock for the whole of my young life, so, needless to say, I flipped the first time I heard the genre-bending “Where It’s At” on MTV. Sure, I liked “Loser” and some of Beck’s previous songs, but Odelay was instantly something different: it was and still is an incredibly produced genre-masher no one could’ve ever expected. Because of this personal history with Beck’s funky pop classic I wasn’t surprised to find myself racing out on the day of its release to pick up the uber-expanded reissue of the album. After all, this was arguably the most creative and influential Platinum-selling album of the 90s.
Let’s start by stating the obvious: most reissues are little more than a ploy by record labels to get people to pay for an album a second time, sans all the initial recording, design and marketing costs. Most include demos, live songs, videos, interviews or alternate recordings, but not usually a whole lot more that truly warrants the price of readmission. This is not the case with Odelay: Deluxe Edition. Along with the original 13-song album, buyers also get a rare Odelay-era soundtrack song, two never-before-heard songs, three remixes and, most importantly, 13 mostly rare b-sides from the Odelay sessions. Remixes aside, this 33-song collection only further establishes the greatness of Odelay.
An underdog experimentalist before the release of this album, Beck worked long and hard on these dense, imaginative recordings, reportedly writing and recording enough material for three albums, a rumor proven by the girth of this reissue. The core album – which in retrospect could most easily be described as a mishmash of the Beastie Boys, grunge, pop and folk – still sounds bigger than life and as brainy and varied as anything from its era. Pair the 13 b-sides with the three other rare studio tracks, and you have yourself Odelay, Pt. 2, a worthwhile extension to an already essential album.
The “bonus album” here, which is being playfully dubbed as Deadweight (after one of the many bonus tracks) in fan circles, sounds consistent to Odelay’s core material, though rightfully not quite as memorable. The songs bleep and burst, usually feeling more like cut-and-paste projects than actual songs. We learn from the extensive liner notes that Beck plays most of the instruments on the songs, accompanied most often by production cohorts The Dust Brothers, who add a programmed layer of static-y grime, offering this lengthy collection an element of continuity.
In addition to the completist-friendly content on Odelay: Deluxe Edition, you also get a few unexpected perks. Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, for one, contributes a write-up that works as a foreword to the Dave Eggers-penned liner notes. All lyrics and original art is included, as well as some rare additional art, a protective slipcase and some goofy, spiffed-up exterior art made to remind listeners that Odelay is supposed to be a fun record. Where most reissues prey on the loyalty of devout fans, this project – coordinated by Shauna O’Brien – is a generous collection of material that should not only make fans feel nostalgic for the sound of the summer of 1996 but also offer the very worthwhile scraps Beck left in his determined, arty rubble.
Not every generation gets a Bowie, but the rockers (and rappers, and funkers) of the 90s did, and this is his masterpiece, an album that still sounds great some 140 months later. It was and still is youthful music for youthful days, an album that will likely sound forever fresh, artistically ambitious and stylistically wandering. (Greg Locke)
