Which wins out on Beck’s new CD, Odelay: his pop instinct or his eccentricity? Turns out to be both. This is American eclectic music, a ’90s analogue to the genre-smooshing slumgullion of Bob Wills, Elvis Presley or Bob Dylan. Like Dylan, Beck admires Woody Guthrie and plays solo acoustic sets. But he’s got rap and postpunk rock in his head, and uses the collaging technologies of hip-hop–both electronic sampling and old-school turntable-futzing.
For “Odelay,” Beck enlisted the Dust Brothers, who produced definitive pop-rap albums by Tone Loc and the Beastie Boys. One cut has pedal steel and a hustling James Brown drumbeat. One has harmonica, accordion and turntable-scratching. One samples the ’60s bossa nova hit “Desafinado.” One sounds like Lou Reed sounding like the Stones. It all sounds tasty.
And collage lyrics, too: such Dylanesque compounds as “paradise camouflage,” “dropout buses” and “jigsaw jazz” swim by in his “get-fresh flow.” We still don’t know what it’s all about, but we like this quatrain: “Goin’ back to Houston/Do the hot dog dance/Goin’ back to Houston/To get me some pants.” It sort of is what it is, no? Got Beck written all over it.
