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A light, journalistic non-fiction book that began as a New Statesman magazine article. There's some worthwhile aspects here, chief among them for me being the contributions by Clive James, Daljit Nagra, Ali Smith, and Daisy Johnson. The editor's introduction is a fascinating history of the album, which stretches from the invention of the vinyl record, to the development of the 'album' as an artistic musical statement rather than a compilation, to Tim Burgess's Twitter-based album listening parti...
If you are a music lover this is a must read as it's an interesting and thought provoking collection of essays about music and how it shaped the life of the writers.I discovered some new musician, listened to some of the albums and love what I read.Highly recommended.Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine
What a terrific idea for a book this is. Edited by Tom Gatti of the New Statesman, it's a collection of pieces from fifty different writers about their favourite album - where they were in their life when they first heard it, what they like most about it and why it continues to mean so much to them.And quite an esteemed list of authors it features too, with the likes of George Saunders, Eimear McBride and Marlon James all providing an account of their most treasured LPs. I found that the pieces
This review first appeared on my blog - https://nsfordwriter.com - on 3rd June 2021.I enjoyed this celebration of music albums and how they affect our lives. My favourite part was the introduction by Tom Gatti (deputy editor of the New Statesman), in which he traces the history of albums, the threat from the trend for streaming and shuffling individual tracks, discusses format snobbery and talks about some of the most important albums in his life (including Radiohead’s The Bends, which is also o...
Everyone has “that” album don’t they. The one that defines that critical point in their life, soundtracks those transformational times. Simon Bates “Our Tune”. But longer. Here Tom Gatti (Deputy Editor of the New Statesman and a former editor of the Saturday Review section of the Times) collects together fifty articles previously published in the NS where a variety of journos / authors / poets tell us about “their” album. What could be more enticing? Top quality wordsmiths setting out what made
For most of us, the deep personal connection with music - or, more specifically, with a particular musical work - is a phenomenon of youth and these pieces reflect that. Most are of the "Growing up in Little Whinging was a real drag, that is until my cousin Roger came to visit one summer and introduced me to punk. We played the Clash so loud that the Dursley's next door kept complaining..." variety. Still huge fun to glimpse into other people's lives and find out about those magical, personal, u...
As with all these types of collections, this is something of a mixed bag; while none of the pieces here are truly awful, it's clear that some of the contributors didn't quite get the brief, and as a result, they wind up slipping into bland journalism rather than confessional experience. But at its best, this is a beautiful illustration of music's revelatory power - both to open up new worlds of the intellect and imagination, and to speak the truth of where you are, whether physically or emotiona...
I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of writers on the albums that shaped them. I went in expecting more long form essays on each album but was met with these short bites of writing that captured what an album meant to each person. The shortness of each piece makes sense once you realise that this started out as a newspaper series. The introduction from Tom Gatti is a brilliant exploration of what the album itself is and how we interact with it from vinyl through to spotify streams. I learned so...
Do you ever just sit and listen to an album? I mean really listen, not just as background music but as the main thing that you are doing? I have to say that I’ve not done that for a long time, just sat and listened from the start to the end of an album. This book has changed that for me. Gatti has asked a number of famous authors, such as Bernardine Evaristo and Ali Smith, to write a short essay on the album that changed their lives. It was fascinating to read about how the albums impacted on t...
Good in parts although quite readable throughout. Not all the writers succeed in conveying why an album is worth listening to and in some cases, if you are not familiar with the album, fail to make you want to hear it.
A book I flicked through in an afternoon - some of the short essays, by writers I hadn’t of about albums I had never listened to, I skipped over. Others, like Deborah Levy on Bowie and David Hepworth on Randy Newman I lapped up.
