Reports from music criticism. While it presents itself as a book of essays, it’s actually an anthology of the author’s book reviews over the past decades. That’s not a criticism, although until you realise what’s happening it’s confusing to see repeated mentions of a particular book.

The essays/reviews range over big names like Frank Sinatra, Elvis, Charlie Parker, and Steely Dan, and the lesser-known like John Fahey and entire scenes like the Mods. One name that’s missing, but that strangely haunts the book by her absence, is Billie Holiday: I think it’s all the jazz references, but you can feel that she should be here in her own right – and then I read the introduction (having read the book), and read the author’s explanation of why he didn’t feel he could do her justice. Hopefully he’ll write another book just for her.

4/5. Finished Friday 9 April, 2021.

(Originally published on Goodreads.)