ALBUM REVIEW: Various Artists 'Beck Song Reader'

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In early 2012, ruminations ran rampant in music circles that Beck was to return later in the year with his first album for four years. By late 2012 we learned that this “album” was in fact a book of new music, and it was expected a studio release of that material would follow at some point after. However, no signs of that happening were forthcoming; Beck refused to even play any of the songs live for a long time. It was all so very Beck of him.

Now, two years and one new Beck album later, these songs have been committed to tape. Or disc. Or mp3. file. Or lossless FLAC. Or vinyl for all you purists. And it’s not a Beck album. Rather he has recruited 20 artists to choose and record a song each. In scope it is of a similar vein to his Record Club project, which sees him cover entire albums by the likes of The Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen and INXS in one day, using an “informal and fluid collective of musicians”. SO rest assured, it’s all very Beck of him.

The charm of the Record Club project comes in its severe ambition to entirely reinvent the songs of other people. The dark drum heavy cover of INXS’ ‘Tiny Daggers’ is a particular delight of the series, turning a relatively cheesy 3-minute pop/rock tune into a constantly stomping, exciting 12-minute club number. Unfortunately none of that slick intuitive vision is prevalent on Song Reader. It’s difficult to tell whether the song writing or song playing is to blame, though neither is helped much by the insistence to over produce every element of every second of every song so that it is the most unnerving listen of the year.

It is executive produced by Randall Poster, who is known for being music supervisor on Wes Anderson films, and his work here is actually very reminiscent of Anderson’s own directorial style. Everything is very painstakingly aligned, ordered and buffered to within an inch of its creative life, only devoid of the neat beauty and matter of fact charm of The Grand Budapest Hotel. It is one of the ultimate unfortunate outcomes of the project, as Randall Poster is one of the great creative minds of modern collaborative cinema. In his work with Anderson he helps create some of the most distinctive work in the field, and here everything seems so very samey.

In a TV interview Johnny Cash once recalled a gig at the Hollywood Plantagenet Theatre where Beck opened for him, and how impressed he was at his ability to do Appalachian (Hillbilly) music. He even commented that ‘Rowboat’ “sounds like something I might have done in the ‘60s”. When Beck was played this clip during a filmed interview of his own, he cried instantly. Johnny Cash covered Beck’s ‘Rowboat’, because it was so perfectly suited to him. One of the rare successes on Song Reader is somewhat reminiscent of this setup as the ever impressive Jason Isbell ,with his distorted soulful vocals, takes on the deeply debauched ‘Now That You Dollar Bills Have Sprouted Wings’, a song that plays well to his classic southern rock strengths. It is as rough and rocky as the album gets and alongside Swamp Dogg’s ‘America, Here’s My Boy’, an eviscerated piano ballad, is as good as it gets.

In theory, and at its heart, Song Reader is still so very Beck, but when taken out of his hands it suffers from a lack of imagination, and feels just out of its contributors grasp. And essentially it’s not very Beck of him at all.

Beck Song Reader is out now via Capitol Records.