Beck Gets Loud

After thirteen months on the road plugging last year's Sea Change, Beck will head into the studio next week to begin recording his eighth album, expected next summer.

"It's pretty aggressive," he says of the new material. "I've been working on it for a while, but I ended up doing Sea Change first. I've been wanting to do a record with loud guitars for a long time."

Some of the material Beck plans to record dates back to 1999's Midnite Vultures, and he says the new songs are reminiscent of his very first recordings. "My early stuff was a lot more punked out and noisy," he says. "I didn't really let myself use big guitars for a lot of years. The early Nineties was so saturated by big guitars that I became really interested by what I could do if you took all the guitars out -- with the space that was left."

In contrast to the earnest Sea Change, the new songs find Beck returning to cut-and-paste wordplay. "It's a bit of everything lyrically," he says. "I like to use language that's colorful, that has images. I like my lyrics to have different things happening at the same time."

Beck will record the tracks at various locations, including the Los Angeles studio owned by longtime collaborators the Dust Brothers. Dan the Automator will make a production appearance, and Beck is also recruiting Timbaland. "We might do a song or two," Beck says. "We've been talking about working together for four years."

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Song Stories

“Is It True”

Brenda Lee | 1964

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."

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