Reviews
Included in Rolling Stone's "Essential Recordings of the 90's.", Ranked #27 in Rolling Stone's "50 Coolest Records"., Ranked #1 in the Village Voice's 1996 Pazz & Jop Critics' Poll., Ranked #10 in Mojo's "100 Modern Classics" -- "Even better than ODELAY's crazy-quilt sampling...was the dazzling songwriting.", 4 Stars Out of 5 -- "It Was Skeetering, Excited, a Grab Bag of Ideas.", "ODELAY is a pop-art nexus where everything is admissable, and nothing means anything outside of its immediate context -- a fine summary of the 20th century indeed.", 4 stars out of 5 -- "Against grunge's death knells, Beck's sunny mosaic of sound and style seemed to augur a radically expansive new form.", Included in Cmj's List of "Top 25 College Radio Albums of All Time", Ranked #4 in Spin Magazine's "90 Greatest Albums of the '90s.", Included in Q Magazine's "90 Best Albums of the 1990s.", "...Beck goes Hollywood....Drums pounce with blunted park-jam finesse. Turntable-scratched hooks pan whimsically throughout....a more sophisticated Beck relays his own introspective emotions...", "...Beck has enlisted the Dust Brothers, the producers responsible for...the Beastie Boys' seminal PAUL'S BOUTIQUE. The result: a pastiche of twangy country licks, hip-hop beats, surrealistic folk, jive-turkey rap, and samples...that further affirms Beck's rock-chameleon identity..." - Rating: A-, 5 stars out of 5 -- "Beck stepped out a true maverick, laying hip-hop vocals on top of country guitar lines in one song, paying equal homage to heavy metal and Serge Gainsbourg in another.", "...ODELAY is intoxicating, proving Beck to be one of the era's more inventive songwriters. His observations are as catchy as his...songs....ODELAY is largely upbeat, even punk, but occasionally Beck reveals a sad soul under his clown's mask...", 4.5 out of 5 stars -- "This splatter painting of breakbeats, electric blues, garage-style kitsch, and Dada versifying still sounds fresh...", Ranked #1 in Nme's 1996 Critics' Poll., Ranked #1 on Rolling Stone's List of the "Ten Best Albums" of 1996., Ranked #6 on Melody Maker's List of 1996's "Albums of the Year.", 8 (out of 10) - "...Beck plunges into the deep foreboding lake of received musical wisdom....All around is madness. Beck takes the thinking man's solution and makes music to make sense of it all. Or nonsense, even....Genius means never having to think too hard...", Ranked #1 on Spin's List of the "20 Best Albums of '96.", 5 stars out of 5 -- "A '90s cultural landmark....Beck's freakfolk freestyle yields some solid gold nuggets among the jive.", "A Joyful Cacophony of Rumbling Funk, Found Sounds, and Guitar Freak-Outs.", 4 stars out of 5 -- "It's a definition of '90s pop....ODELAY is as cannibalistic as a Tarantino movie: a riot of decontextualised pop-cultural detritus.", "...a brilliant kaleidoscope....a lazy, cruising groove....a sprawling, confident album....Nothing sounds out of place in Beck's world...", Ranked #28 in Q's "Best 50 Albums of Q's Lifetime", 5 stars out of 5 -- "For Odelay, he hooked up with the Dust Brothers to play around with punk, hip-hop, acoustic folk, bossa nova, Latin soul, mainstream R&B and line-dance country -- there's as much Babyface as Bob Dylan on this record...", 4 Stars (out of 5) - "...A more ambitious individual probably couldn't have made an album as relaxed, funky, stylish and left-of-center as ODELAY....the album...mooches attractively between country, folk and hip-hop...", 10 (out of 10) - "...Just as Dylan created an entire universe around his helplessly strange vocal instrument, Beck uses sound and imagery to turn his congested yelp into the voice of a prophet....It's a beautiful thing.", 4 Stars (out of 5) - "...crams his encyclopedic knowledge of 20th century musical styles into three- and four-minute nuggets of pure pop....while Beck may appear to be flip in his no-holds-barred approach to music, no other contemporary artist...comes close to his ambitious sense of adventure..."
