When it's not deliberately shitty, there's a good Woody Guthrie-era traditional folk vibe, as in the faithful rendition of the traditional "He's a Might Good Leader", a great immersion in the style in "I've Seen The Land Beyond", "Hollow Log", and uber-traditional blues in "Fourteen Rivers Fourteen Floods". But "I Get Lonesome" with Calvin Johnson's help is almost unlistenably loose and clunky, as is the hopelessly impaired vocal deliveries on "Outcome". The full band rocker "Burnt Orange Peel" proves that sounding like shit can at least be fun, as war whoops cheerfully scream out indifferent to basic good mixing, or in the weirdly distorted "Ziploc Bag". And in the humorously bitter "Asshole"**** and resigned "Girl Dreams"**** some lines are hard to resist, making up for 'casual' approach to performance and recording. On "Cyanide Breathmint"**** Beck masters the enigmatic wordplay that Dylan effortlessly oozed in his heyday:
this is the wrong place to be
There's blood on the futon
There's a kid drinking fire/
When they ask you for credit
Give them a branch
When they want you to get it
Chew on the grass
"Atmospheric" is a better pairing with Calvin Johnson, in the comfortable Beat Happening style, while "See Water" is identical to the sound of Pavement at a crawl. Inconsistency may actually save this album, as the variety of approaches keeps some tendency of indifference from sinking the whole album, though it lets some good tracks hide in plain sight.
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