Swami, shave, junior
easy chill, take the pill, schwill
nudes, ludes, hairy old dudes

After covering The Velvet Underground & Nico with a group of musical collaborators including Devendra Banhart and members of MGMT for the first iteration of his Record Club, Beck has opted to focus his second effort on Songs of Leonard Cohen and has posted his cover of “Suzanne” on his Record Club’s website. Collaborators include Devendra and MGMT again, along with members of Wolfmother and Little Joy.

The website describes the Record Club project as “an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day.” Relying on spontaneity (nothing is rehearsed or arranged beforehand), the group selects an album “to be reinterpreted and used as a framework.” A track is posted to the Record Club website once every week, and the recordings tend to be rough renditions, especially since they are frequently the first takes of the day. “There is no intention to ‘add to’ the original work or attempt to recreate the power of the original recording. Only to play music and document what happens,” the site claims.

Check out the cover of “Suzanne” here, and be sure to check the Record Club’s website over the next few weeks for more covers from Songs of Leonard Cohen.

I should probably mention The Strokes up front because no matter how this album turns out, the first thing you’ll most likely hear about in regards to Little Joy’s debut self-titled effort is going to be compared to The Strokes. Granted, their drummer Fabrizio Moretti is one of the principal songwriters of this new project, but for the most part the comparisons should stop there.
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