ODELAY
| Beck
ODELAY
Odelay is the second official studio album and fifth overall by American alternative rock artist Beck, originally released on June 18, 1996, by DGC Records. Odelay featured several successful singles, including "Where It's At", "Devils Haircut", and "The New Pollution". The album peaked at #16 on the Billboard 200 and eventually sold over 2 million copies in the United States. It was also Beck's first hit album in the United Kingdom, making #17; it has since gone platinum in the UK.-Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
the album on which this former folk-hop singer combined the disparate noise, blues, and subverted hippie-isms of his early work into a showy post-modern marvel-- is reissued with a disc of era-appropriate B-sides and two previously unreleased tracks
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Rolling Stone
Odelay, Beck’s second DGC album, is even more consistently engaging than Mellow Gold and more musically sophisticated than the Los Angeles singer’s late-’94 indie-label follow-up, One Foot in the Grave.
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Slant Magazine
Odelay isn’t just the product of one artist, it’s a defining statement of an entire generation in the throes of finding its own voice.
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All Music
everything flows smoothly, the dense sounds suggesting that the songs are a bit more complicated than they actually are
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Stereogum
Odelay was the moment Beck put it all together.
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BBC
Odelay, originally mooted to be a more downbeat collection of sparse ballads became the pepped up hip hop smorgasbord we all know and love when the Dust Brothers were invited on board to pepper things up.
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Classic Rock Review
this record is an eclectic, zig-zagging experience which seems to employ an effort to include something for various groups of musical fans
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Sputnik Music
Odelay is quite possibly one of the most rewarding genre hopping albums in existence due to how cohesive and fresh it is - even to this day. Surprisingly, despite how incredibly experimental and diverse it is, Odelay is also an incredibly easy listen.
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Pop Matters
It's rich with ideas and a refined sense of imagery.
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Drowned In Sound
Over ten years on, Odelay fully deserves its re-issue, here in an expanded ‘deluxe’ set with a second disc of remixes and b-sides from the time.
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XS Noize
If you want to introduce the younger generation to an ambitious musical adventure “Odelay” is an excellent way to start.
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MusicTech
Odelay met with near-unanimous approval and cemented Beck’s reputation as a restless pioneer.
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IGN
Odelay is one of the most important albums from the early days of rap-rock crossovers, not to mention those to use digital sampling during the technology's infancy.
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The Young Folks
Odelay is the record that most exemplifies Beck’s awareness of those generational threads that connects bluegrass to jazz, hip-hop to experimental rock, and punk to electronica –
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Modern Vinyl
The separation on Odelay is insane. It’s so crisp and so clean. This is a perfect headphone record.
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The Student Playlist
Odelay is possibly the most stylistically diverse million-seller of the ‘90s, and the reason for its consistent brilliance is a combination of Beck’s burgeoning flair for innovative arrangement and The Dust Brothers’ first production gig in nearly seven years.
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Prefix Magazine
Odelay did what the best contemporary music of any era should do: synthesize the past into something funky and fresh
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Record Collector Magazine
It’s an essential album, which, even today, sounds like the most out-there record of those that tried to mix things up a little.
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QRO Magazine
For Beck’s Odelay – Deluxe Edition, the original holds up and then some, and there are definitely some special pieces among the extras.
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Albumism
Crafting the intricately woven songs that would ultimately constitute Odelay was an organic, liberating process replete with new sonic adventures for the kindred musical spirits involved.
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Entertainment Music Reviews
18 years on from its release, it still sounds like it was made yesterday, with a breadth of vision actually more in step with the current border-less musical landscape.
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Bored and Danderous
Odelay had a pretty big reputation to live up to. It’s the big breakthrough for one of the most interesting musicians of the last 20 years.
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Audio Video Revolution
Odelay was the moment that Beck arrived as an artist that was going to be impossible to ignore
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Southern California Public Radio
this release was his peak (to date)
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On The A Side
Beck’s ‘Odelay’ is the best Beck album
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Phoenix New Times
Twenty years later, it's not difficult to see why it is still hailed as one of the greatest albums of the 1990s. It still sounds every bit as fresh and exciting as it did upon its release, even though the entire record is now so familiar as a go-to classic that it nearly risked being overplayed.
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Exclaim!
From there, it's a cavalcade of b-sides that coalesce to make one great Beck full-length.
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NPR
Still, even a musically jaded 20-year-old can't help but be impressed by Beck's ability to mix seemingly unrelated musical ideas and create a sound that's just the right amount of weird.
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The Rumpus
Odelay is a living memory, a patchwork map that’s as big as its landscape.
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Treble Magazine
Beck’s music will live on with the beats and breaths that live on past the page through those two turntables and a microphone—and beyond.
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