LISTEN

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.