Odelay

Sessions began in 1994 as a subdued acoustic project with Rothrock and Schnapf, and Ramshackle survives from that period. Beck then moved to the Dust Brothers, and most of the album was made in 1995 at their Silver Lake studio. He usually began with a guitar riff, the Dust Brothers looped a bar of it, and he reacted to what came back. Early Pro Tools was unreliable: each take took about half an hour to compile and some were lost. Cheap pawnshop Moog synthesizers, reportedly about $60 each, supplied many of the sounds. The sitar and tamboura on Derelict were found through an ad in The Recycler, and the vocal on Novacane was run through a walkie-talkie. Lord Only Knows began life as Ondele, which was misheard as Odelay. Rothrock and Schnapf produced and mixed Ramshackle, Mario Caldato Jr. and Brian Paulson produced and mixed Minus, and the Dust Brothers produced the rest with Beck. The Dust Brothers' style was hip-hop focused but layered, and their small recording room was full of records that supplied samples.

In a 2021 anniversary interview Beck said the record cost about $300,000, that he was 24 and nearly broke, and that Spike Jonze took the only photographs of the sessions. A well-known producer told him that releasing it would be a mistake. Oasis embraced the record and remixed Devils Haircut. The title is a phonetic rendering of the Mexican slang word orale, and Stephen Malkmus called it a pun on Oh Delay. The cover shows a Komondor jumping a hurdle, from a 1977 photograph by Joan Ludwig. Beck has said the other side of his work, Loser and Odelay, was more of a fluke, and that he feels closer to the lonesome side.

Samples

Sample notes in the US CD credits name many of the sources. Devils Haircut samples James Brown's Out of Sight as performed by Them and Bernard Purdie's Soul Drums, and uses elements of I Can Only Give You Everything. Hotwax samples Purdie's Song for Aretha and Monk Higgins and the Specialties' Up on the Hill. Lord Only Knows has elements of Mike Millius's Lookout for Lucy. The New Pollution samples Joe Thomas's Venus, and Jack-Ass samples Them's version of Bob Dylan's It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. Where It's At samples Mantronix's Needle to the Groove. Sissyneck has elements of Dick Hyman's The Moog and Me, Readymade excerpts Desafinado as played by Laurindo Almeida and the Bossa Nova All Stars, and High 5 has elements of Rasputin's Stash's Mr. Cool.

An advance cassette of the album predates the reworking of Novacane and Sissyneck to remove uncleared samples, and those two tracks have been posted on the Internet Archive. Beck said in a 2005 interview that sampling had become prohibitively expensive, giving the example of a half-second horn blare that could cost 70 percent of a song and $50,000.

Release and reception

It reached number 16 in the United States, 17 in the United Kingdom and 5 in Sweden, and was certified double platinum in the United States, with 2.3 million sold by July 2008. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave it five stars and heard folk, country, garage rock, electro, exotica, old-school rap and noise rock. Spin scored it 10 out of 10 and Pitchfork 9.8. It was nominated for Album of the Year at the 1997 Grammys and won Best Alternative Music Album. Rolling Stone placed it at number 306 in 2009 and 424 in 2023, and Pitchfork put it at number 19 on its list of the 1990s. A deluxe edition followed on 29 January 2008. It is also on the 1001 Albums list.

Reissue and live

The deluxe edition of 29 January 2008 adds 19 B-sides, remixes and unreleased songs, among them Computer Rock, Deadweight, Inferno, Gold Chains, a 12-minute U.N.K.L.E. remix of Where It's At and an Aphex Twin remix of Richard's Hairpiece, and runs 2:14:24. Its liner notes carry an essay by Thurston Moore and a transcript of 15 high school students interviewed by Dave Eggers. Pitchfork's Ryan Dombal called the album a showy post-modern marvel, heard the roots of Mutations in Ramshackle, and found the bonus tracks rarely matched the album.

The tour began with record-store and radio appearances in May and June 1996 and ended on 5 September 1997 with a taped performance for Sessions at West 54th in New York, after more than 150 shows. It made Beck's reputation as an energetic live performer. An FM radio recording of the show at Paradiso in Amsterdam on 21 July 1996 is on the Internet Archive.