Jimmy Eat World’s Jim Adkins releases Beck cover – listen

Latest in Adkins singles series could be the first English language recording of the track

After 22 years fronting Arizona rockers Jimmy Eat World, singer Jim Adkins’ new solo singles series is taking him down some unlikely paths.

Having started three weeks ago, the series sees an Adkins original and a cover song B-side released digitally on alternate Fridays. The covers are borrowed from some of the singer’s favourite artists, with the first a track by The Everly Brothers, ‘Give Me A Sweetheart’.

This week’s release, launched yesterday, takes Beck’s sheet music track ‘Don’t Act Like Your Heart Isn’t Hard’ into the studio, in what’s thought to be its first English-language studio recording. Beck’s 20-song sheet music book ‘Reader’
hasn’t been converted to audio form by its author, though the California-native did release versions of the tracks performed by a number of other artists in 2014.

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Jaunes recorded a Spanish-language version of the song for that album, while Beck has also played it live a number of times, most recently in a home-town show in Los Angeles in 2013.

NMEJames Perou

Talking to Substream Magazine, Adkins recently revealed the thinking behind his singles concept:

“Writing is something that I’ve never censored myself with—there’s no agenda. When you’re working on something, it’s just about making a complete idea. It isn’t until later on when you find homes for your ideas. I knew I wanted to do something different from a “rock band album” this year. Everything kind of naturally fit into the place that it has. I thought about how people listened to music now. It’s more and more by track, whether it’s a playlist or a curated streaming service.”

The Adkins version of Beck’s track, below, is the B-side to ‘Love Don’t Wait’, and is performed on acoustic guitar with female backing vocals.

Adkins plans to release his entire singles collection as a set of three 7″ vinyl records on September 11th. The final cover will be Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Girls Just Want To Have Fun’, and will follow Adkins track ‘Hell’, which is due next Friday.

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