It seems preposterous now, but in 1994 Beck was considered by many to be an eccentric anomaly with a freak hit. The magnificence of his album Mellow Gold went oft ignored, overshadowed by its monstrous single, “Loser.” His live show of the time was still rough around the edges, and he seemed uncomfortable with his newfound audience. Those who caught the young singer through only select media appearances would be excused for assuming that he was an imbecile—I vaguely recall him throwing a shoe at Thurston Moore on MTV.

Like many artists who begin their career with an unexpected smash single, this perception wouldn’t entirely melt away until the musician’s official follow-up album, 1996’s Odelay. But his image took baby steps in the summer of ’94, when Beck issued One Foot in the Grave, a beautifully downbeat album made up mainly of self-penned acoustic folk songs. Because of a very smart footnote in his Geffen contract, the album came out not on the major label but on K, the famed Olympia, Washington, imprint manned by Beat Happening veteran Calvin Johnson. Recorded by Johnson at Dub Narcotic Studios, One Foot in the Grave is minimal and intimate. It instantly aligned Beck with both traditional folk and blues artists—it opens with Skip James’s “He’s a Mighty Good Leader”—and the lo-fi sounds of the era’s pop underground.

This week, Beck reissued the album through his own imprint, Iliad, with a slew of bonus tracks plucked from K singles and previously unreleased archival material. In retrospect, the album seems at once characteristic of Beck’s work and a blip in his repertoire: Unleashing singer-songwriter material in the wake of the funkier Mellow Gold established his pattern of alternating styles with each album. Yet One Foot in the Grave is very much wed to what was then indie rock, a genre to which Beck never really returned—as he became an unabashed star, his subsequent albums of non-sample-based material sound bigger and more polished. Just as it’s difficult to imagine Beck as a one-hit-wonder, it’s impossible to picture him collaborating with somebody like Calvin Johnson.

Both artists remain accessible: Tonight, Johnson plays 92YTribeca with his latest band, the Hive Dwellers. For streamed tracks of One Foot in the Grave, visit beck.com. (And for a 2005 TONY interview with Beck, circa Guero, click here.)