Odelay
Beck
Score:95
Reviewer: Ed Butler
Label: Geffen (USA & UK), Interscope (Australia)
Reviewed: Aug 5th '08, Released:1996
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, 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, 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.
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.
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.
