Beck Song Reader Album To Feature All-Star Cast

We’re very excited to see that Beck has put together an insane lineup of performers to interpret the 20 songs from his 2012 Song Reader project for a new album that’s due on July 29 via Warby Parker/Capitol Records. Beck will be joined by the likes of Jeff Tweedy’s Tweedy, Norah Jones, Jack White, Jason Isbell and Jack Black on the new LP, which features different performers tackling the material he originally released as a book filled with sheet music as per Future Heart and Consequence of Sound.

Beck produced the album along with Randall Poster and Wes Anderson. The upcoming release follows a series of Song Reader concerts that featured a slew of special guests in San Francisco, London and Los Angeles. As our friends at Consequence of Sound astutely pointed out, this has to be the first time Jack White AND Jack Black appear on the same record.

“Like a kid getting a special package in the mail and opening it up with anticipation, these interpretations of songs from the Song Reader book have surpassed what I could have imagined when putting the book together,” Beck revealed in a statement. “The book addressed the idea of a song in its most elemental form, letting others give it a voice. It amazes me to hear how these musicians have made the songs their own and in the process revealed that the interpretation is the living breathing soul of the piece. These interpretations have made the book something new, something better.”

Watch Beck perform “I’m Down” at the London Song Reader concert, a tune Jack White interprets on the new album:

Here’s the tracklisting for Song Reader:

1. Moses Sumney – Title of this Song
2. Fun – Please Leave A Light On When You Go
3. Tweedy – The Wolf is on the Hill
4. Norah Jones – Just Noise
5. Lord Huron – Last Night You Were A Dream
6. Bob Forrest – Saint Dude
7. Jack White – I’m Down
8. Beck – Heaven’s Ladder
9. Juanes – Don’t Act Like Your Heart Isn’t Hard
10. Laura Marling -Sorry
11. Jarvis Cocker -Eyes That Say “I Love You”
12. David Johansen – Rough On Rats
13. Jason Isbell – Now That Your Dollar Bills Have Sprouted Wings
14. The Last Polka – Marc Ribot
15. Eleanor Friedberger – Old Shanghai
16. Sparks – Why Did You Make Me Care?
17. Swamp Dogg – America, Here’s My Boy
18. Jack Black – We All Wear Cloaks
19. Loudon Wainwright III – Do We? We Do
20. Gabriel Kahane with Ymusic – Mutilation Rag