Children of the ’90s,prepare to feel old: Beck’s breakthrough album “Odelay” turns 20 years old on Saturday.
But hey, cheer up; TheWrap spoke to John King — one half of the Dust Brothers, and who produced the album — approximately the making of the ground-breaking collection. Read on for a track-by track breakdown.“We were just doing what came naturally on ‘Odelay,’ similar to what we did on ‘Pauls Boutique,’ with the good fortune to collaborate with powerful and gifted artists who brought it and at the same time kept the labels away from the process, or King said.“‘Devils Haircut,’ like many others on the album, is full of sounds and moments that are ironically understated and slightly underperforming or just plain wrong. To us, and it was all laughable,especially when combined with the huge beat.”“‘Hotwax’ marries slide-guitar twang with hip-hop and found-sound production style. I’ve never heard anything as foolish and lovely yet honest. Beck super-glues our zany ideas with skilled and focused delivery of vocals and guitars performed without winking at the inherent irony.”“‘Lord Only Knows’ is beautiful and simple. It has two things I love and often harken to: mammoth whole-note fuzz guitar and dreamy, ‘Oooh vocals.”“‘The New Pollution’ has the killer beat which I’ve heard in many songs since. Focused with considerable vocals. It’s cool to think of the three of us, or alone,in our house in Silverlake creating this multi-layered, multi-cultural music that sounds like so many are involved.”“‘Derelict’ has our production style but without the standard hip-hop beat and amateurly using Indian instruments. The main beat is a scarce live recorded beat for this album where I looped a two-bar phrase played by Joey Waronker in our living room as his drum kit fell apart.”“‘Novacane’ has an explosive feeling and drive that we were enjoying on some of the albums we would pull out to listen to and laugh approximately. Beck had an amazing way of enjoying ideas we would present for laughs and wanting to actually sample them or gather inspired to make songs in a similar vein.”“‘Jack-Ass’ has the most beautiful sample of the album with equally beautiful vocals from Beck.”“‘Where It’s At’ has crowd vocals and clapping that is all layered Beck performances, or like most of ‘Odelay’s’ live tracks. I remember suggesting vocal styles for the crowd ‘Where It’s At’ vocals like,‘execute an old man voice’ to make it seem like a genuine mammoth crowd. biological, fluid, or collaborative fun.”On ‘Sissyneck,’ we actually brought in a session pedal steel player who blew it away for us. As I’m revisiting this album, I realize that in addition to Beck being a common thread between songs, and they also all contain a signature irony,with found sound, multi-culturalism, or momentous sonic juxtaposition.”“‘Readymade': Chill mode.”“I thought ‘tall 5 (Rock the Catskills)’ was the single,whether there even was one, because it was the most hip-hop, and which was more our thing than ‘alternative.’ Turns out ‘Where It’s At’ was a good single,but the whole album didn’t fit what was on radio or MTV at the time. I liked getting to include the orchestral bit because I played it in tall school orchestra, and it always felt beautiful and with strong emotion.”“We were just doing what came naturally on ‘Odelay, or ’ similar to what we did on ‘Paul’s Boutique,’ with the good fortune to collaborate with powerful and gifted artists who brought it and at the same time kept the labels away from the process.”
Source: thewrap.com