I finally bought a copy of Beck's new album; now I'm trying to work out what to do with it.

Yes, I'm an old-fashioned sort of guy. I buy albums. Despite ever dwindling space in the music room there's something in me that still responds to having a physical product in my hands.

And there are some people whose albums I always buy. Bob Dylan, Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen obviously. Jack White, Elvis Costello, Nick Cave, Billy Bragg, Benji Hughes, The Low Anthem, Bill Callahan, Gillian Welsh... actually, it's getting easier to see why the music room is becoming so crammed.

There are more too, and high up on the list is Beck. I first discovered Beck with his brilliant Odelay album. He'd had a big hit with the slacker anthem 'Loser” but I'd kinda ignored it as a novelty song. How wrong I was. Odelay, with now-seminal songs in the form of 'Two Turntables and a Microphone”, 'Devil's Haircut” and more, bore the stamp of greatness. He followed it with Mutations, a brave and complete change of direction, moving from the Dust Brothers cut-up hip-hop Odelay production to a live band. I still love it.

Radical reinvention
And from then on everything Beck has done has been a radical reinvention of whatever came before, be it modern funk on Midnight Vultures, the slow sad Sea Change or the percussive experiments of The Information (an CD that came with a blank front and a pack of do-it-yourself stickers so that 'no two albums would look the same”).

But nothing has been quite as radical a departure as the new album Song Reader. It arrived by mail, a handsome package the size of an A4 book, its contents held between two solid blue hardback covers bearing the inscription 'Twenty New Songs By Beck”. And the contents are... twenty beautifully illustrated and printed sheaths of sheet music. Twenty two in fact, as there is also an 'introduction” and a 'preface by Beck Hansen”. I show it to friends who visit and, after a brief flick through the song sheets, they generally say 'and where's the CD?” There isn't one.

The piano's workout
So the piano's been getting a bit of a workout as I vainly struggle with what a kinder person would call sight reading, trying to find out what the songs sound like. They're not simple. Beck has always had a quirky way with melody and it hasn't deserted him here. The songs with ukulele chords were a bit easier. I'm still wondering about contacting the Tauranga Big Band to see what the song with a horn chart sounds like...
I did search out whatever looked easiest, just so's I could at least try and get a handle on one song.
'The Wolf is on the Hill”, I can report, is a rather lovely folk tune. Quite old-timey. I could sing you a couple of verses.

But, of course, it's only a folk song if you play it that way. Tag on a couple of electric guitars, a bass ‘n' drum groove, or that big band and you'd get something quite different. And that's pretty much the point.
You won't hear Beck's versions of these, even if you scour the internet. He has never recorded them. He doesn't want to impose his vision of the songs over yours. It's a 'do with them as you will” collection.
To that end he says 'Don't feel beholden to what's notated. Use any instrument you want to. Change the chords; rephrase the melodies. Keep only the lyrics, if desired. Play it fast or slow, swung or straight. Take a song and make it an instrumental or an a cappella. Play it for friends, or only for yourself.”
Not bad advice for anyone wanting to cover any song, Beck's or otherwise.
And there's a website. Songreader.net.
Anyone can upload videos or audio they've made of the songs. There are quite a few there and some of them pretty good.
It's a way to hear the songs.

Strangely pleasing
Or at least versions of the songs, as any two can be shockingly different.
And, with no ‘original' to compare to, every take is equally valid.
In fact, if there's no ‘original' is your version even a ‘cover version'? I find something funny and weird and strangely pleasing about that.
Perhaps this is musical democracy in action.