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Jul 30, 2014Song Reader made for a pretty cool objet d'art, and it inspired a boatload of intrepid musicians--rock groups, string ensembles, kooky one-man bands--to upload their versions to YouTube. That freewheeling spirit also informs the new Song Reader compilation.
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Aug 1, 2014Many pieces highlight Beck’s mordant humor. Professional decadent Jarvis Cocker proves ideal for “Eyes That Say I Love You,” dealing wryly with the delusions of love.
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Jul 30, 2014Sparks, Fun., Norah Jones and Jarvis Cocker imbue pithy vignettes with their own personalities, Jack White and Jack Black play with chirpy nonsense songs and Swamp Dogg’s soulful take on America, Here’s My Boy is heartbreaking. This is certainly more than an academic exercise.
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MagnetSep 18, 2014This is a valiant and enjoyable varied attempt, by a seriously stacked cast of contributors. [No. 113, p.61]
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Aug 6, 2014As uneven as it is, Beck's fans will find this experimental release to be an essential one.
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Jul 29, 2014As with any such collection of disparate voices, some of these renditions disappoint, others are inspired.
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UncutSep 3, 2014In the absence of original recordings, it's hard to know what to judge these against. [Oct 2014, p.80]
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Aug 15, 2014This is Beck, so there's also subtle, magical weirdness in even the most straightforward tunes. The best cuts here make that bloom.
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Aug 6, 2014Having the songs preserved on record undercuts that intention slightly but this is still an odd, delightful collection of tunes and it's nice that non-musicians--and listeners with an aversion to homemade YouTube renditions--get to hear these now too.
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Jul 28, 2014Overall though, this still feels like a missed opportunity; a more inspired roll call of contributors could have pushed Song Reader into essential listening territory. As it is, fans might well get more out of playing these songs than listening to them. Then again, that was always the point.
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Sep 17, 2014There’s nothing here as inventive as the ambient electro, hip-hop, psych, and string-orchestra versions made by the amateurs and semi-pros who embraced the project 18 months ago. There are, however, some very good takes indeed.
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MojoSep 12, 2014The results are too eccentric and sprightly to squash the music's potential. [Oct 2014, p.89]
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Q MagazineSep 3, 2014[Heaven's Ladder, performed by Beck is] so good, though, that it makes the rest of this complicated exercise seem like a waste of time. [Oct 2014, p.108]
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Jul 31, 2014For those late to the party, the album offers an opportunity to catch up and at least not miss out on a fine batch of Beck songs which might have otherwise evaded the mainstream. For those with more time and the urge to explore, though, just get yourself down to songreader.net where the real spirit of the project still awaits you.
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Jul 29, 2014Many of the contributors give the material a rootsy, rattletrap approach, creating a flat consistency that drags a bit. It’s not until the second half that Beck Song Reader comes fitfully to life.
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Jul 28, 2014These head-scratching moments mean that, despite the collection's successes, it probably works better as a sheet music oddity than a cohesive album.
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Jul 28, 2014Ultimately, it's a risk-free album of covers: accomplished, certainly, but hardly a novel experiment.
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Aug 4, 2014For all the eccentric performances and approaches, it’s hard to warm up to these songs.
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Jul 31, 2014Not everyone is interested in branching out, which is the album’s main shortcoming. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with Tweedy or fun. sounding like themselves, but it feels like a missed opportunity to try something different.
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Jul 30, 2014The idea is clever, and very Beck: a mix of the modern and the antiquated so fluid that you start to see how they're not that different to begin with. The execution feels out of his hands, and really, out of everyone's--just another project whose purpose seems lost in the labyrinth of production.
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Aug 12, 2014An album filled with songs that seem unable to grab attention.