Beck – Stereopathetic Soulmanure

3/5

1994

Thanks to his special record deal with Geffen, Beck was still able to release a few more records on indie labels. The first of which, Stereopathetic Soulmanure, was released shortly before Mellow Gold on L.A. punk label Flipside. Essentially a clearinghouse of folk and country songs, comedic live recordings and noise experiments, Stereopathetic is undoubtedly the oddest, most difficult and least consistent album in Beck’s oeuvre. It actually feels more like a compilation than a studio album since there is very little that binds together his shifts from Half Japanese-styled primitive punk to old-timey folk. That being said, even though much of this is simply novelty, there are a few left-field classics that surface. “Rowboat” is a gentle Appalachian hillbilly tune (Johnny Cash was so impressed with it, he later covered it on his album Unchained); “Puttin’ It Down” reaches back to Beck’s anti-folk roots, and his humor emerges on “Satan Gave Me A Taco,” a surreal, slow-building country song. This isn’t his brightest moment, and it can really only be recommended to hardcore fans, but Stereopathetic Soulmanure helped confirm Beck as one of the singular talents of the ’90s alternative explosion.