I’m a huge fan of Nick Cave’s music over the years, and believe he’s broken through into a new creative upland in recent years.
On top of that, his writings in “The Red Hand Files” are staggering in their wisdom and humanity. This long-form interview with him by the Irish journalist Sean O Hagan is a masterful assessment of a life lived to the full, in music and beyond it. It deals with the tragic death of his son, creativity, the responsibilities of an artist and so much more. All human life is contained herein.
I found this book uplifting and devastating in equal measure, and it has stayed with me day on day since I read it, helping me rethink almost everything I do.
A BOOK OF THE YEAR, ROLLING STONE, NPR, PITCHFORK, THE TIMES (LONDON), TELEGRAPH
“An astoundingly intimate book-length conversation on art and grief spanning the duration of the pandemic years . . . As with Cave’s music, you might flinch, but you will feel alive.” ― Pitchfork
Faith, Hope and Carnage is a book about Nick Cave’s inner life.
Created from more than forty hours of intimate conversations with the journalist Seán O’Hagan, this is a profoundly thoughtful exploration, in Cave’s own words, of what really drives his life and creativity.
The book examines questions of belief, art, music, freedom, grief…
I’m deeply interested in the history of music and the industries that surround it.
This book is a magisterial and original look at the history of popular music in the late 20th century, told through a selection of different genres. I learned immense amounts about music I thought I was already quite knowledgeable on, and was introduced to swathes of new artists and ideas as well.
One of Oprah Daily's 20 Favorite Books of 2021 • Selected as one of Pitchfork's Best Music Books of the Year
“One of the best books of its kind in decades.” —The Wall Street Journal
An epic achievement and a huge delight, the entire history of popular music over the past fifty years refracted through the big genres that have defined and dominated it: rock, R&B, country, punk, hip-hop, dance music, and pop
Kelefa Sanneh, one of the essential voices of our time on music and culture, has made a deep study of how popular music unites and divides us,…
I read less fiction than I’d like to, but this book absolutely consumed me from start to finish. Its wit, historicism, characterisation, and idiosyncrasies were wonderful to be immersed in for a time.
It's an original subject for a book, and its immersion in the period was tonally flawless. It’s a long book; I wished it was longer, I could barely put it down while I was reading it.
Two magicians shall appear in England. The first shall fear me; the second shall long to behold me The year is 1806. England is beleaguered by the long war with Napoleon, and centuries have passed since practical magicians faded into the nation's past. But scholars of this glorious history discover that one remains: the reclusive Mr Norrell whose displays of magic send a thrill through the country. Proceeding to London, he raises a beautiful woman from the dead and summons an army of ghostly ships to terrify the French. Yet the cautious, fussy Norrell is challenged by the emergence of…
A book about songwriting - collective ruminations on 25 years at the coal-face, a non-technical run through my favourites of my own catalogue, and an attempt to draw some lessons from them.
