Listen: On Music, Sound and Us

by Michel Faber

Overview

"I'm not here to change your mind about Dusty Springfield or Shostakovich or Tupac Shakur or synthpop. I'm here to change your mind about your mind."

There are countless books on music with much analysis given to musicians, bands, eras and/or genres. But rarely does a book delve into what's going on inside us when we listen.

Michel Faber explores two big questions: how do we listen to music and why do we listen to music? To answer these questions, he considers a range of factors, which includes age, illness, the notion of "cool," commerce, the dichotomy between "good" and "bad" taste and much more.

From the award-winning author of The Crimson Petal and the White and Under the Skin, this idiosyncratic and philosophical book reflects Michel Faber's lifelong obsession with music of all kinds. Listen will change your relationship with the heard world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781335000620
Publisher:	Hanover Square Press
Publication date:	11/28/2023
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	448
Sales rank:	190,926
Product dimensions:	9.00(w) x 6.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

MICHEL FABER has written seven other books, including the highly acclaimed The Crimson Petal and the White, The Fahrenheit Twins and the Whitbread-short-listed novel Under the Skin. The Apple, based on characters in The Crimson Petal and the White, was published in 2006. He has also written two novellas and has won several short story awards, including the Neil Gunn, Ian St. James and Macallan. Born in Holland and brought up in Australia, he now lives on the south coast of England.

Hometown:

A remote cottage in Ross-shire, Scottish Highlands

Date of Birth:

April 13, 1960

Place of Birth:

The Hague, Netherlands

Education:

Melbourne University

Website:

http://www.michelfaber.com

Editorial Reviews

"Great, smart fun, and full of theses to provoke arguments and pointers for new ways to, yes, listen.“—Kirkus STARRED review

"[I]nsightful and engaging."—The Media Tourist


"Michel Faber wrote this book just for you."—Robert Fripp

“An extraordinary and compelling ‘journey into sound’ which examines close and distant listening in all its myriad ramifications, mainly in the form of music both popular and otherwise—and it’s particularly good at evaluating music's intrinsic worth from a commercial and aesthetic viewpoint… Michel Faber writes beautifully, non-condescendingly and provocatively about something as basic and fundamental to human existence as oxygen, and which like oxygen would be exceedingly hard to do without… I found this, Michel's first non-fiction book, brilliant and a joy to read… He’s obviously listened and thought long and hard about the act and art of consuming sound/music—essentially, electrochemical reactions in the brain—in all its multitudinous splendor, and he raises many compelling points along the way… Listen is right up there with Richard Meltzer’s The Aesthetics of Rock and Geoffrey O’Brien’s Sonata for Jukebox at the top of my mental music shelf.” —Gary Lucas

From the Publisher

08/01/2023

Novelist Faber's (D: A Tale of Two Worlds) nonfiction book shows a parochial view of what various genres of music have to offer outside the author's own preferences, which are inclined toward different ages of English rock. As much as there's a thesis to the book, readers may find it hard to follow since musical taste is often not about music at all. Many times, people listen to it to fit in with their peers, to connect with people who like the same things. The author argues that classical musicians just play the notes, and there's no room for interpretation, which some readers (certainly classical-music lovers) may find absurd. Many chapters do little to advance the topic, and 44 pages are devoted to interviews with musicians about their top-10 lists. VERDICT The essays in this book don't display the same attention to fine detail that made Faber's novels a success. There's rarely any serious explanation, just opinions, sometimes appallingly argued.—David Keymer

Library Journal

★ 2023-09-05
An entertaining excursus into the noisy world of music.

“When you were born, what did you know about music? The only sounds you instinctively loved were made by your mom.” So writes British novelist Faber, author of The Crimson Petal and the White, in this appealing foray into nonfiction. This isn’t Nick Hornby territory—Faber isn’t interested in sharing his top-10 album list or revealing much about his musical holdings, save that he doesn’t love the Wings album Band on the Run or early ’70s Deep Purple—but instead a liminal land incorporating neurology, psychology, and sociology. Most of us profess to love music, but do we really listen to it? And what do we listen to? For many seeking to find their tribe, it’s the music that everyone else in that tribe is listening to; for many who’ve already self-identified, music is often a stroll down memory lane. Faber is highly opinionated (“Holland would prove to be The Beach Boys’ last artistically credible album”; “Some people just have shitty taste”), but he’s also self-effacing and -deflating, and he poses fun challenges. For example, if you really love music, then instead of listening to an Eagles knock-off band, seek out the pop tunes of a place like Honduras or Fiji, and then branch out beyond your preconceptions and your nostalgia soundtrack and find something that will carve a few new furrows into your cerebrum. The author also recommends you not waste your time staking out a position in the snobbish arguments about whether vinyl or CDs or mp3s sound better than other media. The real medium, he insists, is your mind, and it’s our instrument, too. “The world,” he writes memorably, “is playing us.”

Great, smart fun, and full of theses to provoke arguments and pointers for new ways to, yes, listen.

Kirkus Reviews

Faber’s writing is so dizzyingly accomplished that he is able to convince you that, just sometimes, the old stories are the best ones.”

praise for the author The Guardian

Nathaniel Priestley's creative pitch patterns and British enunciation give wonderful vitality to Michel Faber's colorful prose and expansive thinking about music. The Scotland-based writer of short stories and novels is controversial in literary circles. His idiosyncratic opinions on how music connects with the human race can sound snarky and unsubstantiated--more like "sofa ventilations" than insights--but are invariably entertaining. With statements like "Some people have crap taste" as an example, there is a steady flow of bold comments on such topics as pop bands, composers, and sound equipment, as well as broader subjects like British imperialism and global finance. This top-shelf writing could not have found a better narrator than Nathaniel Priestley, who consistently finds the exact vocal tone to express one hundred percent of this author's originality. T.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2023 - AudioFile