THAT New Beck Album

Faber and Faber is thrilled to announce it will be releasing Beck’s new “album” Song Reader in the form of twenty songs existing only as individual pieces of sheet music, never before released or recorded. Complete with full-colour, heyday-of-home-play-inspired art for each song and a lavishly produced hardcover carrying case (and, when necessary, ukulele notation), Song Reader is an experiment in what an album can be in the 21st century. The release is beautifully illustrated by Marcel Dzama (who created the imagery for Beck’s acclaimed Guero), Leanne Shapton, Josh Cochran, Jessica Hische, and includes an introduction by Jody Rosen (Slate, The New York Times) and a foreword by Beck himself. Song Reader has been designed by Beck with the help of McSweeney’s for release in December 2012.

The 20 songs here, including two instrumentals, are as 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, the reader. The package measures 9.5” x 12.5” with 108 pages comprising 20 individual full-colour song booklets—18 featuring original lyrics, and 2 instrumentals—with covers from more than a dozen different artists.

Lee Brackston, Faber’s Publishing Director, said of the project: “Beck is one of the great maverick pop stars of this, or any age, and as soon as I saw Song Reader the relevance of the concept struck me. It is thrilling to welcome Beck onto a music list at Faber that is already home to Julian Cope, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Jarvis Cocker, Nicky Wire and others. Song Reader makes a radical statement about the value and importance of performed and recorded music at a time when these very things are under threat.”

Tagged Beck, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Faber and Faber, Guero, Jarvis Cocker, Jessica Hische, Jody Rosen, Josh Cochran, Julian Cope, Leanne Shapton, Lee Brackston, Marcel Dzama, Nicky Wire, Slate, Song Reader, The New York Times.