So Beck's new album is sheet music

[Bebpo]

BECK & McSWEENEY’S PRESENT
BECK HANSEN'S SONG READER COMING IN DECEMBER 2012

In the wake of Modern Guilt and The Information, Beck’s latest album comes in an almost-forgotten form—twenty songs existing only as individual pieces of sheet music, never before released or recorded. Complete with full-color, heyday-of- home-play-inspired art for each song and a lavishly produced hardcover carrying case (and, when necessary, ukelele notation), the Song Reader is an experiment in what an album can be at the end of 2012—an alternative that enlists the listener in the tone of every track, and that’s as visually absorbing as a dozen gatefold LPs put together.

The songs here are as unfailingly exciting as you’d expect from their author, but if you want to hear “Do We? We Do,” or “Don’t Act Like Your Heart Isn’t Hard,” bringing them to life depends on you.

BECK HANSEN'S SONG READER features original art from Marcel Dzama (who created the imagery for Beck’s acclaimed Guero), Leanne Shapton, Josh Cochran, Jessica Hische, and many more, as well as an introduction by Jody Rosen (Slate, The New York Times) and a foreword by Beck. The package measures 9.5” x 12.5” with 108 pages comprising 20 individual full-color song booklets—18 featuring original lyrics, and 2 instrumentals—with covers from more than a dozen different artists.

Readers’ (and select musicians’) renditions of the songs will be featured on the McSweeney’s website. Check back at http://www.mcsweeneys.net/pages/song-reader and http://www.beck.com/ for further information and updates as they are available.

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/pages/song-reader


I'm all for experimental art, but what about if half the reason you like Beck's music is his vocal work?  Hmmmmmmmmmm............I'm guessing he'll play all this stuff live and people will make bootleg "Beck" versions of the album.

[Mr. Gundam]

Crazy ass Scientologist.

I absolutely love Sea Change, but am pretty indifferent to the rest of his catalog.

[Trurl]

This is kind of awesome. 

[Positive Touch]

Crazy ass Scientologist.

I absolutely love Sea Change, but am pretty indifferent to the rest of his catalog.

this, plus i like odelay.  dude is mad overrated.

this idea is also fucking stupid.  why not just record shit people want to hear, then put the sheet music as a pdf online?

[Robo]

But all of Beck's albums are sheit music.

[Trurl]

Crazy ass Scientologist.

I absolutely love Sea Change, but am pretty indifferent to the rest of his catalog.

this, plus i like odelay.  dude is mad overrated.

this idea is also fucking stupid.  why not just record shit people want to hear, then put the sheet music as a pdf online?

Maybe he's reacting to the limited expectations of the repertoire a popular music group should have, the tendency to view the album version of a song as the "true" version, the way that we have been a mostly read-only culture for the better part of a century, or other things.

[Positive Touch]

Maybe he's reacting to the limited expectations of the repertoire a popular music group should have, the tendency to view the album version of a song as the "true" version, the way that we have been a mostly read-only culture for the better part of a century, or other things.

or maybe i just think it's stupid that he's charging money and issuing press releases for some fucking sheet music.  the b.s. about "true" versions of a song and whatnot sounds like the shit artists make up to try to give meaning the glued-together trash piles and paintings of squiggly lines they put in "alternative" art shows

[Trurl]

btw, my post wasn't meant to sound condescending.  The "maybe" meant that I was speculating as I typed.  Seeing it quoted made me realize that it kind of looks like a "Maybe it's for this obvious reason, dumbass!" type of post.

That said, I still think you're wrong.

[G The Resurrected]

Yes beck's new album is shit music. Thankfully he's made it easier to use as toilet paper this time around.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I eagerly await some trippy shit from some of his more famous fans once the music is released.

[close]

[recursivelyenumerable]

charging MONEY for PAPER, what has this world come to

[Diunx]

[Robo]

Beck is nothing if not a bit pretentious.  The guy released a Yanni cover album done from memory (among others in the same style).

But with his productivity, if he chooses to release some tossed-off nonsense here and there, you can still be sure he has something "normal" in the pipeline.  AFAIK, he still has an(other) album in the works, he just put out a bunch of songs for some Vita game, and he did a bit of rapping and production on the recent Childish Gambino mixtape.