Just started listening to Soup. First impressions: It's authentic and self-assured; no reason this should have been panned. My superficial opinion: when music looks both backward and forward, critics tend not to know what to do with it and typically dismiss that form of creativity.

Incidentally, the Gene Clark album "No Other" got the same double-whammy from the critics and the popular listeners, and (like Soup) is now considered a masterpiece.