Beck: Odelay (Vinyl LP)

Unlike Stereopathetic Soul Manure and One Foot in the Grave, the indie albums that followed Beck's debut Mellow Gold by a matter of mere months, Odelay was a fully-fledged, full-bodied album. Released on a major label in the summer of 1996 and bearing 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 colours, 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 appear. 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.

2016 reissue on 180 gram vinyl.

1. Devil's Haircut
2. Hotwax
3. Lord Only Knows
4. The New Pollution
5. Derelict
6. Novacane
7. Jack-Ass
8. Where It's At
9. Minus
10. Sissyneck
11. Readymade
12. High 5 (Rock The Catskills)
13. Ramshackle