Stereopathetic Soulmanure (1994)

Stereopathetic Soulmanure (1994)

Stereopathetic Soulmanure

Many of the things that could be said about Golden Feelings could also be said about Stereopathetic Soulmanure, the album Beck released via the label Flipside just a week before Geffen was set to release Mellow Gold in 1994. Comprised of lo-fi recordings and live performances scattered from 1988-1993, Stereopathetic feels like damage control from an artist who wasn’t all that into the attention he was already receiving due to the success of “Loser.” Like, “Hey, here’s all this weird shit I’m actually about.” Overall, it’s a bit more listenable than Golden Feelings. Hidden in the shambolic mess of it all are a few straightforward country/folk songs that aren’t too dissimilar from music Beck would write later. (One lingering distinction for Stereopathetic is that it has the song “Rowboat,” which Johnny Cash would cover on Unchained, the second album in his career-renaissance American Recordings series.) Still, that relative listenability doesn’t save Stereopathetic Soulmanure from being easily less engaging (and, at times, a great deal more annoying) than all the other remaining Beck albums, and it’s mostly useful as a curiosity, a portrait spanning five years that sums up an early phase of Beck’s career that some fans might not be totally aware of.