Beck - Gimme - Non-Album Tracks (2013)

Here's the next in my long series of stray tracks albums for Beck. Despite being a prolific songwriter, he didn't release a studio album between 2008 and 2014. However, he remained busy. In 2013 alone, he performed enough new and unique songs for me to be able to compile this album. In that same year, he also did his very unusual "Song Reader" project, but I'll deal with that in a different post. None of the songs here were a part of that project.

The songs here are a grab bag of different things. Four of the songs are A-sides to singles, and another is a B-side. All those are originals. "Evil Things" is also an original, but that comes from a concert bootleg. "I Am the Cosmos" and "Sound and Vision" are covers played in concert, and were originally done by Chris Bell of the band Big Star, and David Bowie, respectively. I also included the medley of Beck's hits "Devil's Haircut" and "Where It's At" because it's a very rare acoustic version that I like.

My version of the song "Gimme" is unique. Beck put out an A-side version of that song that's only about two and a half minutes long. He also put out another version that is split in two and totals over 20 minutes long. I thought the short version is too short and the long version is way too long. So instead I made my own edit of the first half of the long version that's about six minutes long.

The bonus track, "Heaven Can Wait," is a duet between Beck and Charlotte Gainsbourg, who is the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg, one of Beck's musical heroes. In 2009, she released the album "IRM" with all the songs either written or co-written by Beck. He also produced the album. Beck generally has never played these songs himself, but in 2013 he played a concert in Paris where Charlotte Gainsbourg lives, and that's why they played a duet of this song on stage. But unfortunately the sound quality of the bootleg recording is just okay, so it only merits being a bonus track.

01 Defriended (Beck)
02 I Won't Be Long (Beck)
03 Evil Things (Beck)
04 Gimme, Part 1 [Edit] (Beck)
05 Back to You (Beck)
06 I Am the Cosmos (Beck)
07 Devil's Haircut - Where It's At [Live Acoustic] (Beck)
09 I Just Started Hating Some People Today (Beck with Jack White)
09 Blue Randy (Beck with Jack White)
10 Sound and Vision (Beck)

Heaven Can Wait (Beck & Charlotte Gainsbourg)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15127428/BeckH_2013_Gmme_atse.zip.html

The album cover is heavily based on the cover to Beck's "Gimme" single. However, to distinguish it from that, I increased the size of the text at the top, and also increased the size of the main painting. What that replaced was merely white space.