If you are like me, you didn’t even bother listening to Beck’s ‘Song Reader’. I mean the only way to listen to these songs was to give a try to the numerous videos posted by fans on YouTube, Soundcloud or Songreader.net, and I didn’t care enough. In 2012, Beck released this ‘album’ as a book of sheet music but he never recorded the songs. Only musicians bought the thing (or die-hard fans very probably) and recorded their performances, while trying their best at interpreting a song or two. However, Beck started to play these songs live with a variety of guests (Franz Ferdinand, Van Dyke Parks, Jack Black, Jarvis Cocker, Jenny Lewis, Childish Gambino, Dan The Automator, Jon Brion, Kronos Quartet, Beth Orton) during several shows last year, and he revealed by the same token that an album was in the work:
‘We’re just trying to get different musicians to agree and I hope that happens soon…If we got people to participate in a compilation of the songs I think that would be great and I’d also love to do another compilation of the versions that fans are doing. There’s some really good versions out there.’
According to the Future Heart, it seems that this is almost done, as the album can already be pre-ordered on Amazon, and will be issued via Capitol on July 29th. This means that Beck fans will have had three Beck albums this year, ‘Morning Phase’ released last February, this ‘Song Reader’ and another one that Beck always mentions, probably set to be released this fall.
Although we don’t know yet which artists will be featured on the album, according to the Future Head, Toronto’s The Star knows even more about the subject. In an interview, David Campbell, Beck’s dad, revealed that he has recorded his son’s album with the LA Philharmonic, no less:
‘We did a concert of Beck’s music back in November called Song Reader with the L.A. Philharmonic. We had Childish Gambino and Jarvis Cocker and a bunch of actors — Jack Black, Anne Hathaway and John C. Reilly — who sang songs from the book.’… ‘The orchestra was the band, which was a new thing for all the performers. It was really beautiful, so I’ve recorded these arrangements and we’re in the process of making an album of it. There was way too much work to confine it to 2,000 people in a concert hall.’
He also says he is hoping to tour with Beck in a series of orchestrated concerts, and this can’t be a bad idea:
‘We’ve talked about doing a tour that would be with orchestra, going city to city and using the orchestra in that city, and I think we’ll eventually get to it’
If you search for ‘Beck Song Reader’, YouTube will return you more than 8,000 results, featuring live footages of Beck himself or different videos by talented fans, so you can always spend a lot of time watching all these videos or, if you prefer, wait for the official release in July. Still my favorite video had to be this one for obvious reasons,… so admirably crafty!
