1996 again, summer was in full swing by now. I was changing. For a good couple of years before this, I was an angry, uptight young metalhead who channeled the frustrations borne of a repressive, religious teenhood into loud, heavy music. Much of it reflected the darkness in my own mind that again, was (ironically) informed by the religious worldview I was bought up with and fighting against. However, this was the summer that I realised I was in danger of being swallowed whole by my own angst, so my attitude had started to shift. Basically, I'd become a slacker.
The same new friend from the previous entry, it turns out, had a similar upbringing to mine, but he escaped sooner. Either way, I felt I could relate to him in a lot of ways, especially given that he liked a lot of the music I did before getting into metal, and through him, I found myself drifting back there, which is how I ended up with a copy of this album.
Of course, in the 90's everyone knew who Beck was, mainly due to MTV favourite 'Loser' from 'Mellow Gold'. However, what a lot of people didn't know is that his record contract allowed him to release less commercially accessible material on small indie labels, and 'Stereopathetic Soulmanure' was the result of that.
A cynic might dismiss the album and consider me liking it hipster posturing. Admittedly, it's not the most immediately listenable Beck album you'll ever hear, the songs are scrappy, lo-fi affairs that sometimes sound like Beck is really just taking the piss, but for me, that was a big part of the charm. I found something defiantly "fuck you" about songs that were so willfully discordant, noisy, and chaotic. Above all, I found it funny and enjoyed the "WTF!?" reactions of people I'd play the album to.
At the time, mine was a tape copy of the album I'd recorded from my friend's CD. I was living in a student house, but rather than go home for the summer, I opted to stay in town, even though the guys I was living with had gone. To avoid paying rent, I told the landlord I had gone home and lived rent-free in the house for about 3 months by laying low and making sure I was out during the day. And yes, I pulled it off; the landlord never came to check on the house, and I was rarely in (I only really slept there), so he was none the wiser!
One morning, I woke to a nice spliff, then played this album at full blast whilst cooking breakfast. For some reason, that rather prosaic memory has always stuck with me, and whenever I think of this album, I think about those cheeky, rent-free summer months, most of which were spent drifting aimlessly, visiting friends, getting high (a lot), going to festivals, looking in shops at stuff we had no way of being able to afford, being poor as fuck (no steady job), but being content and perfectly happy. It reminds me of the summer I spent unshackling myself, realising that metal no longer did it for me, making the decision to quit university and stay in town with my new friends, doing whatever for as long as I could. I had no idea where I was going at this point, but I didn't care. Everything was new, exciting and fun. Perhaps the album stayed with me because my entire attitude at that point was as "fuck you" as the music on it.
'Stereopathetic Soulmanure', then. A special album partly because of the music, partly because of the memories and partly because of what it personally represented for me at the time. Either way, this album has a special place on this list.
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