Odelay

It remains unclear why I must listen to Beck.

Never been a big fan of Beck and hearing this album in its entirety did not change that!

Music for people who wear visor beanies and won't shut up about their trip to Cambodia. From the cheap Nirvana scam to the cringey sound effects, despicable album overall. People say it's a playful blend of mixes; I thought it was a chaotic mess. Some of the more classicaly Indie songs like Jack-Ass and Ramshackle were alright, but it's of little reward after having to go throught some of that abysmal whiteboy rap. The second song, with the chorus in spanish, is a borderline war crime.

bit abrasive for me

Después del pelotazo de Loser, Beck se destapó con este magnífico Órale (o retraso, según las fuentes) con la ayuda fundamental de los Dust Brothers (Paul's Boutique de Beastie Boys o Tone Lōc). El clavo en el ataud del grunge, junto con Emperor Tomato Ketchup” de Stereolab o Endtroducing… de DJ Shadow. Odelay en realidad es el 5 disco, aunque para el resto de la humanidad es el segundo. Paso de ser un chalado anti-folk o low-fi-folk-alternativo a un tipo a tomar muy en serio. Hip-hop con raíces, ahí el faro eran The Roots y allanando el camino a toda una generación ( LCD Soundsystem estaban al tanto de cada movimiento de Mr. Hansen) Devil´s haircut es un comienzo estupendo (I Can Only Give You Everything y Out Of Sight de los Them). Hotwax sigue por los derroteros de su debut Mellow Gold. Una gozada llena de inspiración. Lord Only Knows suena hoy en día igual de bien que entonces, una revisión de lo mejor de los 70 (con Órale incluido). The new pollution, con ese vídeo entre Austin Powers y Bowie, un tema embriagador. Derelict no me acaba de gustar ese aire easy listening , sin embargo Novacane sí. Jack ass es uno de sus clásicos, aunque meter el sample de la versión de Them de Dylan es jugar con ventaja. Él lo hace de forma magistral. Where it´s at, con Beck enfundado en el traje de oficinista, despacha otro clásico a lomos de un órgano que dota al tema de un colchón perfecto. Intergalactic de los Beastie Boys sonará a esto. Minus, es hip-hop-punk. No es lo mejor, pero añade variedad al disco sin desvirtuarlo. Sissineck es un tema de country funk, otro temazo que une A Part of Me de Country Funk y Life de Sly & The Family Stone. Readymade mete un sample de Desafinado y otro de Admit It del ilustre Rory Gallagher , mientras que High 5 (Rock the Catskills) lo hace de la Sinfonía inacaba de Schubert. Ramshackle cierra con Charlie Haden al bajo (Ornette Coleman band) Computer Rock es un pista oculta. Una obra genial y única, que tuvo su continuación en el intimista Mutations, el funk desbocado de Midnite Vultures, y el retorno con los Dust Brothers en Güero (2005). Y no es su mejor disco!!! prefiero Sea Change, Morning Phase e incluso Ride Lonesome. Pero este es mucho más divertido. La portada es extraña y sugerente, un Komondor que parece una alfombra. El disco tuvo nada menos que 5 singles: Where It's At, Devils Haircut, The New Pollution, Sissyneck y Jack-Ass.

No recordaba lo bueno que es esta disco. La referencias al country, las letras, los pequeños ritmos introducidos en la tema. Hermoso, tenía 16 años cuando lo escuché por primera vez

Ive heard of beck many times before apparenlty its prety weird. Obviously I know him because of his song "Looser", wich I never liked a lot but it migth be because of overplay.(Btw is he a one hit wonder ?) The album is very fun and every song feels different. Wich is fantastic but in my oponion he doesnt nails every single genres he attempt and some songs sound a bit dated. Still a very unique and cool album it manages to stay interesting during its whole runtime. A strong 3.5/5

Starts off very strong

Not what I though Beck sounded like despite having listened to Beck before and hearing what he sounds like

A couple of catchy hits and overall a distinct sound. It's a solid album.

interesting. heard some grunge influences. seems very experimental and progressive in a weird way

pretty nice

3.5/10 - I don’t like Beck. I didn’t like him before this project and I haven’t changed my mind with more exposure. I don’t like his delivery and I don’t like the sound as a whole.

Great listen

Probably Beck's best all-around album. A big 'ol mess of music and sound. Thirty years on, it's still a crowd-pleaser.

Listened before? No? Familiar with the artist? Yes Thoughts: - I know I like the singles on here, but I don't think I've listened to the full thing. - Kind of weirder than I realized, though that's not necessarily a bad thing. I enjoy weird-ass lyrics 😄 - Not a fan of the static noise in "Readymade" when listening on headphones... Otherwise had a great time with this! Favorite track(s): Where It's At

I would love to live inside Beck's head for a while, just to understand where this deranged mix of noises come from. It's not always successful, but it's almost always interesting. Maybe a couple too many random screeching sounds that irritated me. I don't know if this is my favorite Beck album, but it's got so many great tunes.

I still listen to a lot of 90s alternative/indie rock, but it is satisfying to see that the stuff I hated back then has aged so poorly. The whole album has an air of unseriousness that completely debases any musical qualities it might have.

sounds ok, just something empty about the whole album - a collection of cool sounding songs but ultimately empty.

This is a rare alternative hit maker that in they day I thought was cool. A great video artist as well, the video for Devil's Haircut is amazing. Other people have done stuff like Beck does but I think he kind of invented it. Slacker vibes, funny lyrics and fun songs, whats not to like?

Don't understand the hype around this, Beck is the Justin Hammer of music, obviously decent but trying so hard to be likeable and cool that it becomes uncomfortable Bizarrely I've heard some random beck tracks on Spotify since I heard this album and they aren't bad, maybe this is just a miss of an album for me 2/5

High 3, enjoyed it but not much stood out. Devil's haircut was my favourite track.

War gut

У меня есть пул из примерно 10-20 артистов из разряда "блин, это прикольный челик, надо бы как нибудь его послушать" и с годами, я таки до кого нибудь из них добираюсь. Как понимаете, Beck - один из тех самых челиков. Спасибо 1001альбумс челенжу за то, что выводит меня из моей музыкальной скорлупы таким образом. Вощем-то, крайне оригинальный альбом, как оказалось, с обилием всяческих электронных, кислотно-психоделических звучков/семплов интересного сведения/монтажа, ну и что самое главное, песни то действительно запоминаются. Одно дело когда ты наворотил каких-то там экспериментов под эгидой великого смысла, а совсем другое, когда ты ещё и потрудился чтоб это была catchy мелодия которую захочется переслушать. Ещё могу отметить, что понравилась небрежность некоторых звуков, придающая песням дополнительный слой сырости, в те же годы подобным баловались и Blur и Weezer, думаю всему виной гранжевые девяностые. (хотя и не без влияния хип-хопа и брейкбита безусловно) Но да, повторюсь, здесь у нас не просто какой-то пригранжеванный, электронный альбом, а действительно оригинальный такой супец, в который Beck закинул множество идей и перемиксовал множество жанров, сдобрив забавной лирикой. Прикольно.

Really liked Beck back in the day. Listening to this again, it's still pretty good, but very 90s.

really enjoyed this genre blending will listen again sometime! sort of a lofi version of linkin park, would make sense if beck was an inspiration for them

Rate the the genre crossing tracks and Influences. Probably way more experimental than I ever realised beck was.

Odelay is a strange and eclectic album. For me it travels the full spectrum from super engaging to super annoying songs. There is plenty here to like, and equally songs that I hate. I can't deny his song writing abilities!

This is a great record. I hadn’t listened in a long time

Great album

Really enjoyable album. I don't think it's perfect, because I think in some cases Beck plays around and experiments with sounds just for the sake of it. I prefer some of his later albums where he demonstrates more control over the sounds and experimentation. Still, this has some classics on it and the Dust Brothers production is excellent.

Corny tbh

I don't like this one as much as the other Beck album I recently got but it was still pretty good, with a couple songs that weren't for me in the mix

how much did Beck pay to get his albums on this list

Chock-full o’ Beck! Weird, groovy, and fun, a really damn solid album. 5/5.

Good

Damn it, dis is groovy. I'll give it a 4 as I believe it will leave in my system pleasant residual funk.

some fun noises and things certain songs were not available :hmm:

it's fine i guess. doesn't really tantalise me in any way though

I enjoy eclectic alternative Beck much more than depressing, sad Beck. This album is solidly the former. Not a bad song in the bunch, including a few of his most well-known hits; I had a lot of fun with this album. A pretty good 4/5 for me

Rustic, country and distorted. Favorite track - Sissyneck

There are exactly three listenable songs here and even if they’re really good, the rest is just a lousy proto rap-rock and I can’t with this.

6.8

Really enjoyed this, a bit odd but good.

I can’t 100% nail down why it is I can’t connect with Beck. I know that sea change was way too down beat for me, odelay has the energy I want but I think the genre hopping makes it too jarring. I thought it was alright.

Great album with a classic album cover.

nie znam sie chyba ok

This was good

i wanted to like it but it was so boring to me

Odelay? more like... Odelyay!!

Bien.

Album has some pretty interesting instrumentals which, in my opinion, ruin some songs but also make some songs better. The New Pollution uses these instruments well but a song like Novacane was just annoying because of that ringing. Slow songs were good. All in all an okay album. Standout for me was Hotwax.

this one was interesting at least! random swan lake sample

Not my favorite

Classic high school album. Haven't had a listen all the way through since then. Very enjoyable.

Discordant and chaotic. I get why people might like it but definitely not for me

Not as clever as it thinks it is. Like an Indie mash-up of B-sides by Moby and the Fun Lovin’ Criminals. But I couldn’t find a hook that grabbed me through all the layers of samples, bleeps and distortion, all of which felt overused to disguise a lack of tunes. It’s well produced - perhaps over-produced, and as such just felt like a good example of where less could have been more.

Used to own this album but there's a fair chunk of it I don't remember. Just a little bit too janky overall for me to really get into.

Loser is a great song but unfortunately, it's not on this album.

Used to have a hate-tolerate-quote like relationship with Beck. Overall I didn’t like him, but he did have atleast one track that was great at clubs and got me (or rather kept me) on the dance floor. Saw him live at one of the really muddy Glastonburys. God knows what he thought he was doing but he came on stage in an immaculate white suit… which was mistake when the crowd was mud encrusted. He was pelted by a continual shower or mud and threatened to leave the stage and not play anything if people didn’t stop. I guess there were more people in the crowd who actually wanted to see him though as the rain of mud did stop (for the most part). I apparently now only have a bleh-meh! relationship with this particular album. Was very so-so. I’m sure I have heard better Beck albums - although this hasn’t inspired me to go hunting for them.

I love this album but it's not a 5

I tried but ai just don't get it. Sounded a bit like random songs on the radio with someone spinning the dial every so often

Something about Beck usually stops me fully committing - great singles but patchy albums perhaps (Sea Change an honourable exception, imo) . But this does hold up well. An eclectic set, which leaves me feeling a little generous.

Not my favourite Beck album, but a huge step-up from Mellow Gold, showing that he could actually string together a cohesive and innovative LP after Loser framed him as a fortuitous one-hit wonder who would disappear as quickly as he rose to prominence. Favourites: Lord Only Knows, the New Pollution, Where It’s At, Devil’s Haircut

He’s a weirdo but some of the music is pretty ok.

Стиляга

Man, I miss nonsense Beck...

If this list was forced to choose only 1 album per artist featured, this would be my pick for the Beck album to be featured. It's the purest distillation of his work, from his genre-jumping to his weird songwriting that feels like it permanently lives in left field. You won't find too many psychedelia-meets-slacker-indie-meets-rap albums out there. Beck somehow makes all of these coexist and even blend in together at times, with the myriad samples - then a novel concept - as well as own detached, chameleon-esque performances. I was not expecting to like this album as much as I did considering the previous 2 Beck albums I was given (the string-heavy, chamber pop Sea Change and the weirdo trip hop Guero) were much more homogeneous than this. Beck's style, to me, works best when the genre switching between tracks are wide, like on the change between the dancey(?) indie rock of "The New Pollution" to the sleepy almost raga rock of "Derelict," followed next by the blown-out noisy rap rock of "Novacane." It just works perfectly in the context of this immaculately sequenced album. There's hardly a single wasted note on Odelay, and every idea is given just enough time and space to feel fully developed, whether it's a full song or a single brief sample. This is a remarkably well-constructed album from the side of alternative music where the trains don't run. It maintains a conscious sensibility to convention without sacrificing its daring experimentation. A triumph all around in Beck's varied career. Key Tracks: Devil's Haircut, The New Pollution, Derelict, Jack-Ass, High 5

Meia bomba

Not for me. Very repetitive songs, and I don't like the vocals

Erg inconsistent. Veel random zop tussendoor. Niet heel prettig. Beck’s nieuwe werk vind ik beter

took a while to listen. love "ramshackle"

Some famous songs on here like Devils Haircut and Where's it at.

I've long considered myself a Beck fan- I appreciate how many different styles and genres his songs tackle. Odelay is no exception- it's a h7ge mix of styles. Mostly satisfying although sometimes a little too out there for me. The hits are all great thought. Overall- 3.5/5. Considered a 4 but the album did lose me at the end

I was very ready to enjoy this based on my limited experience with Beck, but in the end I just found it a jumble of annoying songs. Looking back at my reviews for two other albums by Beck on this list, I find this disappointment is the same story again. Also, three albums from this guy? Come on, that's overrepresentation.

Another artist with far too many albums. Not that influential and not good enough to deserve three. Setting that side, this is probably the one that deserves to be there if any do. Having said that, this seems fine and enjoyable but I don't really hear anything to set it apart from any number of other solid 90's albums that aren't in the list and probably don't deserve to be, and like most albums from the era it's too long

Apparently this is supposed to be fantastic and ahead of the curve and I felt like it was just okay. Maybe I'm too modern to really see the revolution. I don't know. I didn't dislike it but I didn't really like it either. Meh.

A hyperactive collage of the mid ’90s where no one bothered with boring things like genre rules and expectations. Beck teaming up with the Dust Brothers was total genius, layering heavy hip-hop beats, gritty blues riffs, slide guitars, and random noise into a massive grab bag that somehow actually works. It can get pretty chaotic and even a little obnoxious with all the static and weird samples, but that’s honestly what makes it so fun. Tracks like “Devil’s Haircut” and “Where It’s At” have these mad grooves and hooks that prove Beck was way more than a one-hit wonder and far beyond two turntables and a microphone.

Essential.

뭔가 느낌은 꽤 괜찮았는데 3점과 4점 중간의 느낌이었다. 그래서 어쩔 수 없이 3점을 줄 수 밖에 없어서 아쉽다. It felt pretty good overall, but it landed somewhere between a 3 and a 4. It’s a shame I had no choice but to give it a 3.

Beck creates great sounds.

It's not bad, but once you've heard a couple of tracks they're all a bit samey.

This is a seminal 90’s album. Devil’s Haircut, New Pollution, and Where It’s At were all hits. Where It’s At is particularly great. The rest of the album is solid throughout. The lyrics are quirky and interesting. The music is a mashup of electronic and jazz and whatever that thing is that Beck does. Super fun, super interesting, super catchy. Maybe not a 5 but a solid 8.5/10

Don't listen to much Beck ... I have him down as irritating. I am biased against him because I made the mistake of watching this video once where he stands on a circular stage in the middle of a sea of musicians and keeps sweeping his arm to get a bunch of them to play, and then again to silence them. And stuff. It's supposed to be a "reimagining" of Sound and Vision, a wonderful Bowie song. It just seemed to me like an obnoxious display of narcissism. So, I'm not necessarily going to give him a fair hearing. Anyway -- Here we go. Beck's finely honed technical precision and unshakeable integrity as an artist allow him to maintain the tightrope tension between engaging and irritating over the full expanse of this album. Expecting a listener to endure that for an hour is a big ask. The New Pollution is pretty successful. Ditto, Derelict. Novacane is extra irritating. It's a push-pull seesaw with Yin and Yang jostling for supremacy in a zero sum game of equilibria. This can take a variety of forms. When Where It's At started, I thought, Oh, yeah, I know this -- this is a good one. By 4 minutes in, I thought, Is this still going?!? I kept thinking it was all percussion and guitar, though close listening reveals very nice sounding bass parts. They're just too low in the mix for the most part. Don't like that. Needs the bass. This album is fine. But ... eh. 2.5 stars Bonus Ironic Twist: I really like Deadweight, but that as it turns out is a bonus track.

I think I'm the minority here but I didn't enjoy this album. no more to say.

I've been going back and re-reading our group reviews and I've noticed one of my tendencies is to approach a known album very enthusiastically only to end in disappointment. I guess Odelay is another such entry for me. I had this record and have fond feelings toward it. I still listen to "Jackass" and just figured I would still like most of the songs on here. But as it turned out I didn't. There were several songs that struck me as just awful (High 5--yeesh) and that surprised me because I don't remember that at all.

Cool album, production interesting throughout.

Turns out I like Beck a lot. Going on rotation.

In a way, it’s a shame that “Sea Change” was the first Beck album I generated, because for as much as I enjoyed it, it’s clear that the sound and tone of that album is an outlier. Not that it’s much of a surprise - this is much closer to the impression I had of Beck’s music before listening to “Sea Change” - but I’ve been disappointed with the rest of these. It’s one of the many albums which really isn’t bad, but is hard to muster up too much enthusiasm for. While I appreciate the eclectic/experimental hodgepodge of genres, it never fully clicks. I think I expected more, having seen the iconic album cover many times (and, to be fair, the cover is great).

Well - he’s unique I guess. If you like monotone, droning… sometimes hip hop, sometimes resembling a song ….it’s for you. Not for me, however. I did listen to the whole thing, but will not again.

Listened to 2/3 albums of Beck’s on this list, and I’m left wondering: who the hell is Beck? He switches through so many musical movements within a single album and amongst his albums that I can’t place him among music history. It’s like he wants to try everything, which inherently ambitious, but leaves me with no impression for who he is as an artist and with varying levels of success. 2.5

I didn't find this album particularly special, but that may just be because of my low thetan level.

This definitely had a distinct sound from other Beck albums. I just don’t think that was a good thing in this case.

I think I don’t like Beck

The timing of this is funny considering the Beck Book DramaTM that's been happening online over the past couple of days. Honestly, I've never really taken the time to listen to his stuff (aside from songs like Loser which I think everyone alive has heard at least once) and all I really knew about him was the scientology stuff. Putting that aside, I really like this. It feels like it's scratching an itch in my brain I didn't realize I had. Will definitely explore his catalogue more deeply (while also crossing my fingers for the downfall of the xenu alien cult).

Ive tried, but I was never able to get into Beck’s music.

I thought I liked Beck..but apparently I’m really only interested in a few songs.

It really is a fun listen so far. The combination of mainly acoustic guitar and the samples is interesting and quit refreshing. Derelict, for example, is such an interesting production and song. Moving so naturally between electronic beats, tabla, and more. Novacane is a very smart try at hip-hop. The beat here is so cool. It is a bit dated, I guess, but it's a part of it. Jack ass is an highlight for me. A very sweet song with worm textures. Like a beach house in southern Mexico. After a chunk of the album full of interesting experiments that aren't exactly what I was hoping for, Ramshackle is a beautiful song. A nice energetic closer in Diskobox. A lot to appreciate about this album, not denying that at all. But for me it's more interesting than enjoyable most of the time. Deserves a 3, I think

It sounded so fresh upon release that it was my album of the year. Has diminished a bit since and Becks made better but it’s still a strong album.

I love that mop dog. Aside from that, like the last Beck album I got, it feels inconsistent. Some good songs and then some questionable instrumental outros on a handful of songs. Likes: Devils Haircut; Hotwax; Lord Only Knows