Consumer Guide Album

Beck: Stereopathetic Soul Manure [Flipside, 1994]
The absurdist neofolkie as goofball abuser, most strikingly in ("ironic"?) rural guise--hick hermit, acoustic bluesman, wallower in honky-tonk lamentation. Satan, tacos, and aphids make multiple appearances, as does a crazy alien's unnatural falsetto. Cultish, and less than the sum of its inconsistent parts. But the offhand dazzle of these odds and sods is the stuff cults are made of. B+