Primer Part 4/Album of the Week: Beck- Odelay

We wouldn't have the full story until later, but you've got to hand it to Beck for making an album like Odelay no matter how much or how little you know about his history. After having a hit single with 'Loser' and being labeled a new voice for his "slacker" generation, nobody should have expected that he had a masterpiece on the way. Mellow Gold can be seen as something of a not-nearly-as-good template for Odelay, but its contemporary Beck releases--Stereopathetic Soulmanure and One Foot In The Grave--certainly didn't point to something like Odelay. The former was an indulgent mess that was itself not-nearly-as-good as Mellow Gold, while the latter was a solid, unique folk-blues affair with an indie rock label and its legendary head.

Strangely, then, the follow-up to Mellow Gold nearly was fashioned more in line with the One Foot in the Grave style than the genre bending, upbeat, party-time bottlerocket that it ended up being. Following his success with 'Loser' and the Mellow Gold album, a few people who were close to Beck died, including his grandfather, Al Hansen, who had a great influence on Beck's life. So Beck began to record sparse, sad songs with Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf, best known for going on to work with Elliott Smith. Some of these songs would appear on Odelay--I'm guessing 'Jack-Ass' and 'Ramshackle'--while others would see the light of day on Sea Change, 'It's All In Your Mind' for sure. As a testament to Beck's character, at some point he scrapped this project and ended up working with the Dust Brothers on something completely different. Often you reach a point while depressed due to the loss of loved ones where you look at yourself in the mirror and say "I can either start trying to feel better, or I can just wallow in misery forever." The music world should be forever grateful that Beck chose to start feeling better, because Odelay is his hands-down best album ever, magnum opus, critical darling, and whatever other nice things I can say about it.

The easiest way to describe Odelay is that it takes all the best ideas from Mellow Gold, makes them better, and crafts an entire album out of them. Songs 'Beercan', 'Loser', 'F***in With My Head (Mountain Dew Rock)', 'Steal My Body Home', and 'Blackhole' all have clear descendants on Odelay, although the scope and depth of imagination and songwriting skill is leaps and bounds beyond what had come before. 'Hotwax' blends slick blues, hip hop, and rock into something entirely new. The jazzy 'New Pollution' features an incessant drumbeat, funky keyboards, and saxophones sailing across the smoky nightclub feel. 'Derelict' is an intense psychedelic funeral built on a foundation of Indian music. 'Where It's At' is the highest of the album's high points, a now classic single that wrangles old school soul and hip hop in exciting new ways, with a wink and series of handclaps that become irresistable by their second appearance. 'Minus' presents Beck's first successful attempt at thrashing punk rock, with a bracing fuzz bass line and a noisy ending that expertly gives way to the country pastiche 'Sissyneck.' Odelay is that rare thing: an album over 50 minutes in length without a wasted moment, and one that keeps surprising and delighting throughout its 13 tracks.

This year, Odelay was re-released in a deluxe edition. Though it's nice to have the hard-to-find or completely unreleased material, I have to say that this deluxe edition is a let down. After vault clearing re-issues of both high content and high quality like those for the Pavement albums, or even other albums done by the same company as Odelay for, say, Sonic Youth's Goo, this feels like a lost opportunity. Eve though it would only interest critics and hardcore fans, why not include alternate mixes, demos, or even the tracks laid down prior to scrapping the somber album?? After all, no casual fan is likely to buy this anyway. In its defense, though, the deluxe edition does contain some gems, such as the soundtrack-only 'Deadweight', 'Richard's Hairpiece' (which is Aphex Twin's remix of 'Devil's Haircut', and every bit as awesome as that suggests), a better full-band version of 'Thunder Peel' from Stereopathetic Soulmanure, 'Brother' and 'Feather In Your Cap' from that somber pre-Odelay session, 'Devil Got My Woman' which is a cover that would be more at home on a One Foot in the Grave reissue, and 'Burro', which is a mariachi version of 'Jack-Ass.' In Spanish. So while the deluxe edition does have some interesting material, it's otherwise mostly crap--everything either sounds like incredibly inferior Odelay-era songs that were rightfully left off the album or messy sketches that don't go anywhere beyond an interesting drumbeat or sample. Finally there's the UNKLE remix of 'Where It's At', which is as overlong and inconsistent as its 12 minute runtime would lead you to believe. So, like an UNKLE album, then. Anyway, the deluxe edition is not what I would consider essential, so those waffling between the two should stick with the original.

Beck's previous releases were interesting and succeeded as albums to varying degrees, but it was with Odelay that he completely proved himself. Sitting here 12 years after its release, it's equally impressive for how much he's accomplished since and how different his next three albums would be. But I digress. Odelay is a startling album, one that is all over the map musically but hangs together indelibly as a whole. It's an album that I have no reservations about calling 'essential listening' because it's exactly the kind of exciting out-of-the-blue landmark release that gets music critics out of bed in the morning for.