Beck Plans 'Standard Format' Album After 'Song Reader'

When Beck is finished exploring the hottest music publishing trend of the 1910s on his new sheet-music effort Song Reader, the singer has plans for new material he will release in "pretty much standard format," he told Australian radio station Triple J. 

"I started a record, largely recorded in 2008, so I'm trying to carve out some time from all the production work that I'm doing to finish those songs before they become relics from a lost era," Beck said. "It's going on a half decade old at this point." 

2012 Gift Guide: Beck Hansen's 'Song Reader'

Expanding on an essay he wrote for The New Yorker, the singer and songwriter said that Song Reader was a way of making music a more immersive experience by allowing people to interact with it instead of receiving it passively. "There's something that's really been lost in our culture and our daily lives," Beck said. "There's this human aspect of someone playing a song themselves, whether they're an amateur or an aspiring musician."

Song Reader is due in published form on December 11th. There's no word yet on a possible release date for Beck's next project.