Charlotte Gainsbourg’s new album, IRM, came out today in the United States and Canada. Beck wrote all the songs, and played most of the instruments, and put a lot of work into the record. Go pick it up today!
PS. Charlotte is appearing on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Eclectic on Wednesday January 27. Beck is supposed to appear with her; he hasn’t played with her at any of the other promo shows or gigs she’s done so far. (link).
So, the Charlotte Gainsbourg album, IRM, has been released in Europe. It is due out in North America in early January. So some promotions and stuff have started, including shows and TV appearences (at least in France, anyway). My understanding is that some of Beck’s band went and backed her on some shows last month, though Beck may not have been involved (see this video, which has Bram Inscore and Brian LeBarton, but no Beck). However, it appears from this blog that they are going back this week to do more, and this time Beck will be involved.
So if anyone is in France and reads this blog, and hears more or goes to any shows, please let us know. If you can record any TV appearences, tape any concerts, grab any setlists, etc. please share with us: computergirls@whiskeyclone.net.
I’ve heard IRM and I must say, I think it is quite impressive. Beck and Charlotte have done some press for the album, there’s some up on charlottegainsbourg.com. Hearing about how they collaborated was very interesting. (However, some are in French. If anyone can pull any useful info out of any interviews, or maybe links to interviews, again, drop us a line!)
UPDATE: I’ve since learned that Beck is NOT in Paris on this trip either. Whether he will be playing any shows in the future with Charlotte, I’m not sure. But as of now, we as a Beck site, don’t need to track the setlists and things. But feel free to share if anything cool pops up!
Today we’re launching a new section of whiskeyclone.net, called Horrible Fanfare. This is a section in which we share fan-made comics about or related to Beck and his music. It should be pretty fun times.
So far we have a great issue based on Mexico, contributed by the very talented Suedehead. It’s pretty awesome. We also have a little comic that we made, starring Beck and based on Spider-Man’s first appearance ever, in Amazing Fantasy #15. Both comics are available to view online, or to download in CBR and PDF formats.
For any budding artists or writers out there, we are open to more submissions. Drop us a line at computergirls@whiskeyclone.net.
A word on technical issues: there will be some. We wanted to make this new section pretty and fancy and fun, and we’re using some fancy tech to do it. For some of you, this may cause issues. If you run into trouble, please let us know in the comments.
So earlier this year, Radiohead released a song called “Harry Patch (In Memory Of).” It was only sold online, and was about the last surviving British veteran of World War I. Then earlier this month, the dude from the Fiery Furnaces went on an anti-Radiohead rant, which included some nonsense about how stupid it was they wrote a song about Harry Partch. Partch is an experimental composer and musician. He concluded his rant by saying “I’d make fun of Beck too, but I’m afraid of Scientologists.” All for press right? But since nobody gives a shit about the Fiery Furnaces and their lame novelty albums, everyone promptly ignored it. Except Beck, who is showing them who rules around here. He apparently wrote a song about Harry Partch and it will be on beck.com later today. Cool!
Evening! Sorry it’s been 2 months since an update. As I say regularly, this isn’t necessarily a news blog, but I do like to keep you up-to-date. Beck’s been up to a few things lately that I thought I’d mention.
Record Club: The second Record Club (Songs Of Leonard Cohen) ended last week. Devendra and MGMT and Beck had a good time going through the songs, even drastically changing some of them. Record Club #3 begins today as well! It’s Skip Spence’s Oar. Beck’s covered some of Oar in the past, releasing “Halo Of Gold” on a tribute to Skip album, and doing “Little Hands” live once. This Record Club involves Wilco, Feist, Jeff Tweedy’s son Spencer, James Gadson, Jamie Lidell, and Brian LeBarton. The first song is up on beck.com now, check for it every Thursday! (Also, still no word about what the fourth Record Club will be!)
Charlotte: Also the album Beck cowrote and produced with Charlotte Gainsbourg has started to hit the webs. It will be released in January, I think. The stuff I’ve heard sounds cool, it’s creative and promises to be interesting.
Devendra: Beck and Devendra Banhart recorded the title song for a movie called “Life During Wartime.” (It’s not the Talking Heads classic.) I’m not sure when the movie is coming out or what.
Jamie: In describing the new Record Club, Beck mentions that “Jamie Liddell was in the studio with me working on his new record.” This was last June. Are they collaborating? Beck producing? This is news, and should promise to be great. (Jamie opened some of the Information tours.)
Norah: Pitchfork reported that Beck did a remix of a song for Norah Jones. She also said she wanted Beck to produce her new album, but chickened out in asking. :(
Beck: I don’t know what, but recently on beck.com Beck mentioned that he’d been in the studio for the last month. (That’s why there was a break in Planned Obsolescence DJ mixes, and probably some of the other sections.) New album?
I noted earlier who was involved with the current Record Club recordings. I took what Beck listed on beck.com to start that post… well I just noticed that beck.com’s comments changed. Initially, it had said that Matt from MGMT was there… but now it says “This time around the group includes Devendra Banhart, Ben, Andrew and Will from MGMT.”
There is both a Matt and a Will involved with MGMT, but it looks like it was Will Berman there and not Matt Asti, for those keeping track. (And it might just be me.)
songs of leonard cohen – beck.com
modern guilt – beck.com
modern guilt – hugo & marie
velvet underground & nico – beck.com
odelay – that guy sven
… started today over on beck.com with the classic Songs Of Leonard Cohen, Leonard Cohen’s first album. It is full of amazing poetic songs and haunting folk melodies—that can easily be reinterpreted every which way. This sounds like it will be an experimental and creative Record Club.
Go and enjoy!
The band according to beck.com is Beck, Devendra Banhart, Ben Goldwasser & Andrew VanWyngarden & Matthew Asti (from the band MGMT), Andrew Stockdale from Wolfmother, Binki Shapiro from Little Joy, and two members of Beck’s band (and the last Record Club), Brian Lebarton and Bram Inscore.
Connections! Beck and Devendra are apparently friends, as Devendra opened a show for Beck, and they did a joint interview together in some guitar magazine once. Beck I believe said that one of Devendra’s songs is one of his son’s favorites, and at the show they did together, they sang a couple of songs together. Also reportedly, Beck has produced a song with Devendra for some upcoming release (details sketchy, but Beck mentioned it in an interview).
MGMT opened much of Beck’s Modern Guilt tours, and they shared the stage a few times (including this crazy show, which by the way, someone must have a recording of to share with us?).
Binki Shapiro is also a friend, an LA musician, she appeared in some of the Information videos and sang backup on a Sia song (which Beck also sang backup on).
Beck said “Andrew [Stockdale] from Wolfmother showed up at some point. That’s how it’s been working out. We’ll get together a group of people, and other people start showing up.”
Leonard Cohen was one of Beck’s stated influences on Sea Change. (Anyone got the quote?)
Longtime Beck/whiskeyclone.net fans may remember that we used to have a section called The Land Beyond. It was full of random crazy Beck crap, the kind that we now sometimes post here. Well, we’ve brought it back. It won’t be updated at all, and we probably won’t even link it from the home page, but it’ll stay up as a kind of archive for those that are interested.
Beck made it through his first Record Club, and allow me to be the first to say that it was a lot of fun and quite successful. Apparently, there will be a bonus surprise early next week about it (I think I know what it is, but I’ll let you be surprised). Also, Record Club #2 will begin right on schedule, every Thursday starting next week. This will not be the Wilco/Beck cover of Skip Spence, but the album done with Devendra Banhart, MGMT, the dude from Wolfmother and Binki Shapiro from the band Little Joy. More on that later!
Also Beck’s newest newsletter notes the new discography section and comments:
We’ve put up a new music section this week we are calling ‘Collected Works.’ This is where you will find all Beck related music. It is also the only source on the Internet that contains the correct lyrics to his songs. Lyrics on all other ‘Lyrics’ sites contain errors and even completely incorrect transcriptions. We’ll be adding content from each album week to week starting with 1994’s Mellow Gold.
:( Sorry Beck. In defense, AlmostAGhost is about as correct as is possible, and I worked on those transcriptions for years with fans who email me and on message boards, and even with beck.com in the past. I’m not saying there’s no errors but in most cases, they’re as best as possible (and even more correct than Beck’s own liner notes!).