Odelay

06/18/1996 3:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Rob O'Connor

It's come to my attention that music critics like to make comparisons based on similarities. It's convenient shorthand for explaining what a particular piece of music sort of sounds like--except that in nearly all cases it doesn't. Take this Beck album, for example. Its emphasis on hip-hop beats, crackling vinyl, raps that stray from the genre's unusually tight subject restraints and odd musical breaks suggest something along the lines of the Beastie Boys. "Devil's Haircut" has the Beasties' smartass policy down cold. While "The New Pollution," with its liberal palette of sounds, creates the sort of trippy color of another era's one-word troubadour, Donovan. "Lord Only Knows" and "Sissyneck" feature slide guitar to suggest those British blues-rock titans, the Rolling Stones. "Where It's At" and "High 5 (Rock The Catskills)" sounds like the booming jive of a blaxploitation rent party in full swing.

What has all this comparison shopping done for you? Probably not a whole heck of a lot. So let me just say that what makes Beck an alright guy isn't who he sounds like, but rather who he doesn't. Beck's got a great sense of rhythm, consistently experiments with new sounds to layer his unpredictable song structures, jumps genres from country-folk to rap-folk to other cool hyphenated musics and he never takes himself too seriously even when it seems like he might be upset about something worth being upset over. Yes, you figured it out; he sounds absolutely nothing at all like Bruce Springsteen. What better recommendation do you need?