Beck -- Odelay

9/10

Is Beck a Scientologist?
Yes.
There, googlers, I hope you are happy.
Odelay is Beck's fourth album, but his first work with the producer duo, the Dust Brothers. Bologna is awesome and chocolate is awesome, but the two don't go that great together. In this case, Beck is chocolate, and the Dust Brothers are peanut butter. I made up this analogy myself. Chocolate, or in this case, Beck Hansen, provides the sweet flavor base, with well-written, catchy verses and choruses. Peanut Butter, or Michael Simpson and John King (the Dust Brothers), is a huge, thick slather of unpredictable ancient samples, beats, and additional instrumentation (there might be a banjo or two, and there might be some stuff that is completely unidentifiable) that...well, I was going to say some stuff about Peanut Butter, and how you can't get it out of your mouth, but that is just gross, and music goes in your ears, not your mouth, but if you put peanut butter in your ears, that would just be weird and uncomfortable, unless you like that sort of thing of course, and in that case, you probably wouldn't be able to hear anything through the peanut butter anyway, so I'm not sure what you would do. Probably not listen to Beck. Wow, this analogy bombed.
Anyway, Odelay is a lot of fun, not only because it features good, well-written songs, but also because of its aural unpredictability. The variation is excellent, with rowdiness, eclecticity (if I'm going to make bad analogies, I might as well just make up words, too), and quiet acoustic moments all getting their due. With hip-hop, trip-hop, rock, folk, and everything else under the sun featured, Odelay should have probably been the death of genre, but it wasn't, so as payback for history,:
1. Everyone go listen to the song "Novacane" and write a five-hundred word essay on what genre this song falls under, because as everyone knows, everything can only be one thing:

2. Compare and contrast with the song that follows "Novacane" on Odelay, "Jackass."
What genre is it? Are they the same genre? Give examples.

3. Get two pieces of bread. Put a Hershey's Bar and three slices of bologna between them. Toasting is optional. How do the flavors combine?

1996 DGC Records
1. Devils Haircut 3:13
2. Hotwax 3:52
3. Lord Only Knows 4:14
4. The New Pollution 3:39
5. Derelict 4:11
6. Novacane 4:38
7. Jack-Ass 4:00
8. Where It's At 5:25
9. Minus 2:32
10. Sissyneck 4:02
11. Readymade 2:43
12. High 5 (Rock the Catskills) 4:10
13. Ramshackle 4:49