Beck LANDMARK: Odelay by: Ed Butler Fri:25-Jul-08 Label: DGC Year: 1996 WB rating 96 out of 100

Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994 left a generation bereft of a standard bearer. Nirvana’s frontman represented the angst of a new breed of youth, defying nationality or culture, redefining the nihilism of the 15 year-old punk scene. Then, through the tragically misguided misapplication of a shotgun, Cobain simultaneously ruined it for everyone.

A cohort of American youth lost their appointed spokesperson and was looking desperately for a replacement. After a decade in the 80s of aimless prettiness, and youth being viewed through the prism of Bon Jovi and Def Leppard, someone had come along who could symbolize the disillusionment and disappointment of youth. Then he shot himself, leaving a gaping hole where the MTV generation’s faith had been.

There were many potential candidates to fill the void, but Beck Hansen was not one of them. Earlier that year, he had created a slacker anthem to rival ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ in ‘Loser’, but the rest of Mellow Gold offered nothing to indicate that Beck would assume any such mantle.

Then, in 1996, Odelay happened. After establishing himself as the unlikely new hero for generation Y, Beck proceeded to absorb and regurgitate, in a gloriously cohesive whole, every single musical (and non-musical) influence that contributed to his sonic upbringing. Here was a pop idol as happy with two turntables (and a microphone) as with a Fender Strat, as at ease at a boot-scooting hoe-down as he was moonwalking across the stage.

Adjectival phrases referring to disparate influences coming together abound in music criticism today, but nothing, before or since, has even come close to matching the level of dazzling cross-genre virtuosity that is Odelay. James Brown funk samples sit comfortably alongside 70s disco effects, Schubert's ‘Unfinished Symphony #8 in B minor’, country & western mournful ballads, rock and roll guitar, early video game sound effects and Beck's own various vocal stylings, switching effortlessly from white-boy rapper to tuneful balladeer. Holding it all together was the Dust Brothers' masterfully dirty funk beats, and production that mirrored the album's ramshackle nature.

What Beck demonstrated on Odelay was his understanding of the links between all of the seemingly incongruent forms of sounds informing his craft. From the garage rock, ascending opening riff of ‘Devil’s Haircut’, Odelay seamlessly segues through the countrified hip-hop of ‘Hotwax’ into the out-and-out country and western blues of ‘Lord Only Knows’, slide guitar and all. Across every second of the album, Beck’s stunningly eclectic record collection is firmly on display, as much Billy Ray Cyrus as Bob Dylan as the Beastie Boys (on whose Paul’s Boutique the Dust Brothers also starred).

However, it’s the seemingly random turntable scratches and minute, second-long samples from myriad unknown sources that truly set Odelay apart. Indecipherable as they are, such a collection of noises ought not come together to form a cohesive whole, but at no point is a drum beat misplaced, a sample inappropriate. The queasy raga of ‘Derelict’ flows into the smooth bass and über-distorted guitars of ‘Novocane’, with its ever-so-brief disco beat breakdown leading into the first verse, a wonderful exemplar of Beck’s talent for restraint in unleashing a judiciously chosen sample.

But it is on the second half of the album that the true greatness of Odelay unveils itself. ‘Jack-Ass’ is as serenely, and strangely, beautiful as it was 12 years ago, featuring some of Beck’s most easily understood lyrics, crooning “I remember the way that you smiled/When the gravity shackles were wild/And something is vacant when I think it’s all beginning”. And yes, that is easily deciphered in Beck’s universe. Through his pretense to toy playfully with similar themes to Cobain, but in the context of the titular loser of his earlier hit, a new bond formed with his peers and early-twenties comrades.

‘Sissyneck’ takes the same deep-south blues-funk of many other tracks on the record, but ups the ante, toeing the line between rapping and singing artfully, before the oh-so-cool slide guitar takes the chorus somewhere else. ‘Where It’s At’ remains, to this day, the finest example of white-boy hip hop ever attempted – the opening keyboard coda now so ingrained on the public consciousness that many who are unaware of the man’s very existence will find themselves nodding along, Pavlovian puppets they are.

Perhaps the two most challenging tracks on the album are left to close it out. ‘Ramshackle’, with its dirge-like pacing atonal guitar strums and muffled percussion, almost serves as an indicator of efforts he would make on later albums like Mutations and The Information. ‘Diskobox’ marries an awesomely smooth piano groove with some truly bizarre effects, beats and samples. Its presence at the tail-end of Odelay is appropriate, as it is only after spending a solid 40 minutes in the man’s headspace that the chaos gains structure and cohesion.

In anointing Beck the new spokesman for a generation of disillusioned youth, music fans in 1996 unwittingly redirected the feelings of frustration that all youth feel away from the Nirvana-inspired nihilism and self-doubt towards the regaining of a finer sense of self – the confusion realigning itself with a person’s sense of where they stood in the world, rather than who they were. And either way, after letting Odelay into their lives, those same confused souls tended to take their angst with a twisted smirk, rather than a tortured grimace.