Hey everybody… sorry it’s been so long, but really Beck isn’t up to much at the moment. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t stuff to talk about here! I don’t intend Paper Tiger to be a news site, but I do like every once in awhile to bring up all the things we know about on the horizon to look forward to. I’ll start with the confirmed things we know about:
1. In a couple of days, the new movie I Am Number Four comes out. Beck has a new song called “Curfew” in it. I do not have any idea if there will be a soundtrack CD release or not.
2. Sometime this year, Thurston Moore is releasing a solo album. Beck produced it! They recorded it at Beck’s house. It was initially announced that the album was called Benediction, but most recent reports say it’s called Demolished Thoughts. (No release date that I’ve seen yet though, but it’s coming this year for sure.)
3. That leads to Beck’s cover of Sonic Youth’s album, EVOL, in its entirety. Not a Record Club, but something he did for, I think, some sort of EVOL deluxe project at the request of Sonic Youth. The release of this is probably up to Sonic Youth, but it’s been floating out there for at least a couple of years now. Hopefully it’s not lost!
4. At the same time Beck registered the copyright for “Curfew,” he also registered songs called “Constellation” and “She Coulda Done Better.” I have no idea what those are.
5. Also last year, Beck produced some songs with Stephen Malkmus and his band the Jicks. Haven’t heard anything about this since last May, which indicated that their work would be out in 2011. Hopefully it still is coming!
6. And of course, Beck mentioned to Pitchfork last summer that he had an album done that he was trying to figure out how to release. (He thought about calling it Rococo, so that’s what fans refer to it as for now.) Nothing’s come of it yet though! (Beck also mentioned that he had some songs that he had finished before doing Modern Guilt.) And of course, there’s the millions of other things he’s probably recorded since then we’ve never heard of and will never hear.
7. I’ll copypaste this from the last “update” I did, last March, and note that I still don’t know when it’s coming:
John Martyn tribute album: Beck has covered John Martyn in the past, in the early 2000s, he used to do “Go Easy†live on occasion. Martyn unfortunately died last year [2009], and Beck is giving a version of “Stormbringer†to an upcoming tribute album. He recorded this in Nashville a few years ago, when he and his band stopped in and did a bunch of covers (he put a Lee Hazlewood cover up on beck.com once from this session). I have no other info about when the album will be released.
8. Beck.com said Record Clubs would resume, and man I hope it does soon. I loved getting a new Beck song every week! The story is after the last one, Beck tried a few times to get one together but for whatever reasons, it never really happened. So he eventually just sent it on a hiatus. He did for a short while have a voting contest, where you could vote for the Record Club tracks that you would want to have on a sort of “best of the Record Club” CD. That was last November.
9. And, as always, I have to mention the 2nd K Record. With the release of One Foot In The Grave Deluxe, Beck dropped the tantalizing note that more info was coming about the album he began for K Records after finishing One Foot. He never really finished it, but it sounded like some of the songs were still around and he was planning to drop them. To tease, he included a song called “The Way It Seems.” No new info about it since… *sigh*
10. Finally, Beck is scheduled to play one concert, but it’s not until August. It is at the Hollywood Bowl, and Beck will be part of a Serge Gainsbourg tribute concert. We all know Beck is a huge Serge fan. It looks like Justin Meldal-Johnsen will be along and a sexy time will be had by all. More special guests will probably be announced in time too.
I’m sure some little things slipped my mind here. But that’s what we’re looking at. I do strongly believe that 2011 will see a Beck album proper. But that’s mostly an educated guess, not based on anything concrete. It’s hard to believe Beck hasn’t played his own concert in almost two years now. Must he be getting as restless as we are?
