Odelay and OK Computer

By Matthew

is a tough couple of weeks. My music collection is alphabetized by artist name and it was pretty uninspiring. Beck may have begun his musical career with cornball anthems like "soda can" and "loser", but Odelay proved that he was worth taking seriously. It was genre breaking back when that wasn't commonplace. It's a sprawling and manic work (he does most of the bizarre voices on the album), but it has some excellent songwriting and a melancholy thread throughout. Yes, it's melancholy – listen to "New Pollution" and "Jackass" again. It might be covered in a thin layer of cheese, but I find myself coming back to it again and again and I don't have the patience for too much ridiculousness in music. My wife and I were talking today about how it's expected or forgiven when a British band is dramatic and downbeat without any sense of irony. You hear something like "Exit Music (for a film)" from Radiohead and say to yourself, "Well that figures... they're British... must be gloomy. I can take this seriously." Beck never takes himself too seriously (well there is Sea Change), but minus a few tounge-in-cheek jibes, I think his music is every bit as layered and transportive as his British contemporaries. Maybe it's all Nigel Godrich's credit?

Speaking of which – OK Computer starts with an O! It's a beautiful and haunting and legendary album. It's painful appraisal of the modern world is bleak, but somehow the record always goes down smooth even though York and co. offer us few reassurances. York has said that "No Surprises" is not explicitly about suicide, but it's somber lyrics are poured pretty heavily over the pleasant instrumentation. If it isn't the soundtrack to a bullet in the head, it's certainly the soundtrack to a departure of some kind. He's looking for some way out - or maybe we'll all just get "Lucky" and find some deus ex machina device that will pull us out of the downward-spiral aircrash of modernity... *sigh* Why do I always still come away from listening to this album in a good mood? It has to be more than the melodies.

A piano salesman once told me his trick to selling an expensive new set of keys (be forwarned - I love this and will probably mention it again): If a customer is on the fence with a particular piano, sit down at it and play a tune from a time when they were 18 years old. If you can find out the exact year, all the better. I was just in to shoot the breeze, but he asked me for fun, "When where you 18?" "1997," I replied. The 60+ year old guy sits down at a beautiful baby Grand and starts banging out "Karma Police" from the 1997 Radiohead release, OK Computer. "Son of a bitch I want that piano!" I said... Guess I was glad to be too poor for his snake charming routine to work.