Beck Enlists Jarvis Cocker, Franz Ferdinand, Others To Perform 'Song Reader' Live

Fans of Beck's latest "album" Song Reader may soon be hearing Beck perform the tracks for the first time. Beck has enlisted a group of superstar musicians to help him perform Reader, an album that the folk-pop troubadour released as sheet music. If you wanted to hear Beck's new music, you had to play it yourself, until now.

According to SPIN, Franz Ferdinand, Beth Orton, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Joan as Police Woman, Villagers' Conor J O'Brien, the Staves, the Guillemots, Michael Kiwanuka, James Yorkston, The Pictish Trail and Jarvis Cocker of Pulp will all aid Beck in the first ever official performance of the album. It's all going down on July 4 at the Barbican in London.

The concert will also include an art exhibition and a collection of some of the better amateur covers of Song Reader. Presumably, Portland Cello Project's excellent take on the album will be included.

If you want to prime yourself with the closest alternative to the real Beck experience, give Project a listen here.