Beck: Odelay: Deluxe Edition

The good, perhaps obvious, news: Beck's Odelay still holds up remarkably

well a dozen years after its release. It's the most fully realized and purely listenable

disc in a catalog brimming with them, and the hopscotch that threatened to date

it immediately has been mellowed by history into something classic instead.

Fusing folk and hip-hop with whatever else struck his fancy paid off for Beck,

and "Devil's Haircut," "Jack-Ass," and even the slightly overdone "Where It's

At" sound as forward-thinking now as they did in 1996.

The not-as-good, perhaps as obvious, news: 19

tracks from the era, all gathered as bonus material for this deluxe edition,

don't hold a candle to the album itself. "Deadweight," originally released on

the A Life Less Ordinary soundtrack, is pretty great, but much of the material that

didn't make Odelay

will appeal to diehards only: An UNKLE remix of "Where It's At" goes on for 12

minutes, and the Beck-periments "Lemonade" and the deliberately obtuse blues

jam "Trouble All My Days" just fall flat. Still, there are diamonds to be had

in this rough—a chilled version of "Jack-Ass" almost bests the album

version, and a remix of "Devil's Haircut" by Mickey P recasts the song as DC

hardcore. And while the collection doesn't unearth any lost classics, it should

at least inspire a few extra listens to Odelay itself—never a bad

thing.