Odelay

by

Beck

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Beck was never better than on "Odelay" (with his "Guero" album being a close second for me personally), and almost 12 years after its original release, this gets the Deluxe Treatment (2 CDs, 33 tracks, 136 min.). Not sure why this is being released at this particular time, but no matter, this is a delight for Beck fans all around.

CD1 (17 tracks; 71 min, 5 stars) brings the original album, and 3 additional tracks. The album is of course a delight from start to finish, finding Beck at the top of his game. I've played it so much that it sounds like a greatest hits album to me. In addition to the best known tracks (Devil's Haircut, The New Pollution, Where It's At) there are little gems like "Hotwax" and "Readymade". The 3 additional tracks are a delightful "Deadweight" (a soundtrack contribution), and the previously unreleased "Inferno" and "Gold Chains", which are great in their own right. Please note that there are 17 tracks, not 16 (as Amazon lists) as a short 45 second instrumental track is sequenced separately.

CD2 (16 tracks, 65 min., 4 stars) starts off with 3 remixes, the first of which is a delightful, if overly long (12+ min.) remix of "Where It's At". The other 2 are not nearly as great. The remaining 13 tracks are a collection of B-sides that popped up all over the world with the various singles of the album. Not surprisingly, there is some "pick-and-choose" here, but still plentiful to appreciate. Highlights include "Clocks" which could've fitted nicely onto the proper album, a straight blues "Devil Got My Woman", a mellow (but not gold of course) "Feather in Your Cap", a beautiful pensive ballad "Strange Invitation" (with strings no less), and the closer Mexicana "Burro" (in Spanish). In all this second CD is a true smorgasbord, as can be expected of a collection of remixes and B-sides.

I am less thrilled with the booklet that comes with this reissue. The first half consists of interviews with high school students interviewed in 2006 on how they've connected to Beck and this album (who really cares?). The second half gives the lyrics to CD1 of this reissue. Most frustrating is that there is zero information on the songs on CD2, in particular no lyrics, and no info where these B-sides appeared. That aside, this is an essential collection for Beck fans who love "Odelay" and want all the music Beck, at his creative peak, created at that time. Highly recommended!

So let's get this out of the way quickly: Odelay is one of the best albums of the 1990s, and is very deserving of the deluxe treatment. And this release comes tantalizing close to actually doing the album justice, collecting (or purporting to collect) non album tracks, B-sides, and other errata to flesh out the Odelay portrait. There's enough wrong here, though, to make one question the $30 purchase price (and to wonder why exactly this thing was in the works for so long)...and if you haven't heard Odelay, you're probably better off grabbing one of the thousands of cheap copies of the original that're floating around.

First, the booklet. I happen to find the "interviews" to be sort of senseless, but I can see someone enjoying them. More problematic is that the lyrics that populate the booklet have been taken directly from a fan-site, errors and all. Universal claims that this was a mistake that should have never made it past the layout phase. I agree wholeheartedly...but it did, and so early buyers (or, perhaps, all buyers) of this disc get a distinctly compromised package. Great!

There's been a lot of discussion about the above issue, but not quite as much discussion about the fact that several songs here *differ* from the original Odelay we've grown to love. Apparently, the compilers grabbed rough mixes of several of the songs (and/or decided to remix parts of the album). The differences range from the subtle (the beeps that begin "The New Pollution" utilize a different sample) to the incredibly obvious ("Hotwax" suddenly has a very evident double-tracked vocal). Why? I can't find anything in the liners that explain why the deluxe edition of "Odelay" changes so much random stuff around in the original album. Given the other issues attendant in this set, I'm willing to bet it was carelessness at play here.

...because there's more where this came from! So we get some B-sides and unreleased tracks. Fantastic! Except where's Diskobox, which was a bonus track on several international editions of the album? It's nowhere to be found here. Worse yet--and I happen to think this is really freakin' inexcusable--several of the tracks that *ARE* here are taken from lossy (i.e. MP3 or AAC) sources. Deadweight and Clock, for example, have noticeable MP3 artifacts, and the corresponding poor frequency response...heck, "Clock" has some DAE artifacts at the beginning, to boot. Was this set assembled by having some guy go on the internet and download MP3s of some of the rarities?

And so on. It's nice, I'll admit, and it's great to finally have some of these B-sides get a re-airing. The idea of charging $30 for something so poorly put together, though, is what energizes the continued appearance of record companies as out of touch, greedy, and incompetent. In the days of ICE and CD Watchdog, this set would have generated letters for *months*...in this day and age, internet warnings will have to suffice.

Summary: If you haven't yet experienced Odelay, run run run to the store and get a cheap used copy of the album. This set's exorbitant price, poor liner notes, and sound issues (as well as incorrect mixes for the original album) make it a lousy way to get acquainted with the original work.