From the latest issue of Blender:
“It looks like an old Mississippi steamboat,” Beck says of the L.A. studio called, fittingly, the Boat, where he’s finishing his as-yet-untitled eighth album. “It’s got a moat around it. I asked them to fill it with water, but they wouldn’t because of the flies.”
OK, so Gen X’s most famous absurdist didn’t get a moat. This year, though, other more crucial wishes came true, which may explain the radical departure from the post-breakup melancholy of 2002’s Sea Change. In April, the 34-year-old Beck married actress (and fellow Scientologist) Marissa Ribisi, and last summer, their first child, Cosimo Henri, was born.
Reflecting his upbeat mood, he’s enlisted the Dust Brothers, the production duo behind his two funkiest albums to date (1996’s Grammy-winning Odelay and 1999’s Midnite Vultures). “After doing the last record, touring America three times, Europe a couple of times, I had to put the acoustic guitar away,” he says.
Indicative of his renewed spirit where “the beats are the focus,” he says, is “E-Pro,” a single featuring his trademark non-sequitur raps laid over a “trashy” guitar riff. “It’s like Nelly but with a garage band.”
Beck says he “really got back into [electric] guitar playing,” and even invited Jack White to help record a song. But don’t expect a star-studded album. “This is the first record since Odelay where I played most of the instruments myself,” he says with a sigh. “And I’ve spent a lot of time trying to get it right.” – Josh Eells
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