Odelay

1	Devils Haircut 3:13
2	Hotwax 3:52
3	Lord Only Knows 4:14
4	The New Pollution 3:39
5	Derelict 4:11
6	Novacane 4:38
7	Jack-Ass 4:00
8	Where It's At 5:25
9	Minus 2:32
10	Sissyneck 4:02
11	Readymade 2:43
12	High 5 (Rock the Catskills) 4:10
13	Ramshackle 4:49

Barnes & Noble

With four releases in 1994 -- his major label Mellow Gold and three indie efforts, Stereopathic Soul Manure, One Foot in the Grave, and the vinyl-only A Western Harvest Field by Moonlight -- the young Beck Hansen was adding up to a precocious prodigy who didn't know how to edit himself. With Odelay, however, he delivered a brilliant album that more than made up for his past indulgences. Released in 1996, Odelay is a beguiling rock opus that won nearly every critics' poll of that year. Working with the Dust Brothers, Beck created a groovalicious sound that wed the laid-back folkie flow of his early indie recordings to a hip-hop feel and a reckless sense of irony. Tracks like "Where It's At" and "Devil's Haircut" introduced Beck to a pop audience, while the album as a whole proved Beck to be a true original, albeit one who collects bits and pieces from the far-reaching roots of pop music, then whirs those influences together in his own musical blender. From country ("Sissyneck") to soul ("Hotwax") to folk ("Ramshackle") to the blues ("Devil's Haircut") to rap ("High 5 (Rock the Catskills), "Where It's At") -- Beck creates an engaging album that's humorous, inspired, and a pure delight to listen to. Martin Johnson

All Music Guide

Unlike Stereopathetic Soul Manure and One Foot in the Grave, the indie albums that followed his debut Mellow Gold by a mere matter of months, Odelay was a full-fledged, full-bodied album, released on a major label in the summer of 1996 and bearing an intricate, meticulous production by the Dust Brothers in their first gig since the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique. Odelay shared a similar collage structure to that 1989 masterpiece, relying on a blend of found sounds and samples, but instead of lending the album its primary colors, the Dust Brothers provided the accents, highlighting Beck's ever-changing sounds, tying together his stylistic shifts, making the leaps from the dirge-blues of "Jack-Ass" to the hazy party rock of "Where's It's At" seem not so great. Like Mellow Gold, Odelay winds up touching on a number of disparate strands -- folk and country, grungy garage rock, stiff-boned electro, louche exotica, old-school rap, touches of noise rock -- but there's no break-neck snap between sensibilities, everything flows smoothly, the dense sounds suggesting that the songs are a bit more complicated than they actually are. Most of the songs here betray Beck's roots as an anti-folk singer -- he reworks blues structures ("Devil's Haircut"), country ("Lord Only Knows," "Sissyneck"), soul ("Hotwax"), folk ("Ramshackle") and rap ("High 5 [Rock the Catskills]," "Where It's At") -- but each track twists conventions, either in their construction or presentation, giving this a vibrant, electric pulse, surprising in its form and attack. Like a mosaic, all the details add up to a picture greater than its parts, so while some of Beck's best songs are here, Odelay is best appreciated as a recorded whole, with each layered sample enhancing the allusion that came before. Stephen Thomas Erlewine