Photo editor Jeremy Harmon tipped me off to this item from McSweeney's.
Beck’s latest album, due out in December 2012, comes as 20 songs existing only as individual pieces of sheet music.
That's a new one.
From the magazine:
Complete with full-color, heyday-of-home-play-inspired art for each song and a lavishly produced hardcover carrying case (and, when necessary, ukelele notation), Song Reader is an experiment in what an album can be at the end of 2012—an alternative that enlists the listener in the tone of every track, and that’s as visually absorbing as a dozen gatefold LPs put together. The songs here are as unfailingly 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.
Readers’ (and select musicians’) renditions of the songs will be featured on the McSweeney’s website: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/
