Beck - Stereopathic Soulmanure - Alternate Version (1994)

Sometimes, less is more. In my opinion, this is one of those times.

In 1994, Beck actually released three albums of original material: his big hit "Mellow Gold," and two under the radar releases, "Stereopathic Soulmanure" and "One Foot in the Grave." ("Mellow Gold" and "Stereopathic Soulmanure" actually came out only one week apart!) The mostly acoustic and bluesy "One Foot in the Grave" is solid all the way through, especially the bonus tracks version, which doubles its length.

"Stereopathic Soulmanure" is much more of a mixed bag. Wikipedia calls it "anti-commercial," because that's what most of it is. It has some songs that are just blasts of feedback or other noise experiments. It is also contains some random found sounds, including a couple of songs that feature a random homeless guy singing instead of Beck. Some people like all that stuff, in which case the full length 63 minute album is for them. But for me, some of the songs were only worth a couple of listens.

I've cut the album is half here, from 63 minutes to 35 minutes. All I did was remove songs, with nothing added. I think the result is a much more solid and listenable album. There are some great songs here that tend to be forgotten due to the noise experiments they were mixed with. Most famously, "Rowboat" was covered by Johnny Cash, and it's one of Beck's best songs in my opinion.

So here's my version of the album. I've kept a few of his stranger things, such as little spoken word bits, to give more of a flavor of the album as a whole. But mostly these are actual well-constructed songs.

01 Rowboat (Beck)
02 Thunder Peel (Beck)
03 Dialogue from 'Normal' (Ross Harris)
04 The Spirit Moves Me (Beck)
05 Crystal Clear [Beer] (Beck)
06 One Foot in the Grave (Beck)
07 Today Has Been a Fucked Day [Lonesome Day] (Beck)
08 Puttin' It Down (Beck)
09 Cut in Half Blues (Beck)
10 Jagermeister Pie [Instrumental] (Beck)
11 Ozzy (Beck)
12 Satan Gave Me a Taco (Beck)
13 8.4.82 (Beck)
14 Tasergun (Beck)
15 Modesto (Beck)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15288875/BeckH_1994a_StreopathticSoulmnureAltrnate_atse.zip.html

Since this is just a shortened version of the album, I'm using the exact same album cover.