Who is James Bradley?
James Bradley is an author and critic. His books include the novels Wrack, The Deep Field and The Resurrectionist, all of which have won or been shortlisted for major Australian and international literary awards and been widely translated, a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus, and The Penguin Book of the Ocean. In 2012 he won the Pascall Prize for Critic of the Year. He blogs at . His new novel, Clade, is published by Hamish Hamilton
Where can I read more about this fabulous author?
What music do they like?
I don’t have any particular rules about listening to music when I write. If I’m working on something that requires a lot of concentration I find music too distracting, but if I’m trying to get my head into a different, more rhythmic space up I’ll listen to various pieces of classical music, usually by Philip Glass or David Lang. Just lately the piece I’ve come back to a lot is Glass’ score for Geoffrey Reggio (of Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi fame)’s new film, Visitors.
Outside of writing I listen to a lot of music, but at any moment there are always a few things on high rotation. One of those over the past couple of months has been Mary Timony’s new band, Ex Hex’s excellent debut, Rips, which takes the punkish energy of New Wave and reinvents it for the 21st century. The songs are great but so are the lyrics, which are smart and funny and brilliantly attuned to the songwriting vernacular of the period they’re drawing upon (“I see you on the street with someone new, you talk sweet … I’ve been the object of your affection/I’ve been the target of your cruel intention”).
I’ve also been listening to The Decemberists new album, What A Beautiful World, What A Terrible World. The Decemberists are a band I’ve always felt like I should like but have never quite connected with, but What A Terrible World is fantastic, and filled with wonderful songs. It also boasts a great video for the first single, ‘Make You Better’.
Some other recent releases I’ve enjoyed are Belle and Sebastian’s fab Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance and Justin Townes Earle’s companion record to last year’s Single Mothers, Absent Fathers. But just at the moment I’m particularly taken with Rhiannon Giddens’ solo debut, Tomorrow Is My Turn. Giddens, who is better known for her work with The Carolina Chocolate Drops, and more recently for providing the star turn on the surprisingly dull New Basement Tapes collaboration, has chosen to release a collection of standards and traditional songs for her first solo album, but her treatment of them manages to be find new angles on all of them. My favourite at the moment is her cover of the Hank Cochran tune, ‘She’s Got You’, which was made famous by Patsy Cline back in the 1960s.
And while we’re on the subject of revisiting standards, somewhat to my surprise I’ve fallen in love with the Brothers and the Sisters’ Dylan’s Gospel, which was recently rereleased by Light in the Attic and features a veritable who’s who of soul and gospel singers assembled by Lou Adler (of Mamas and Papas fame). Suffice to say it does what it says on the box to fabulous effect. And while we’re on the subject of Bob, I’m still getting a lot of mileage out of the Complete Basement Tapes, which were released late last year, and have been a source of constant delight to me ever since.
I’ve also been listening to Amy Winehouse’s amazing Back in Black again, which if anything seems to have got better with age (although it’s a little unsettling just how many of the songs are about drinking) and a great album by an English blues guitarist called Liam Bailey, who recorded an album with Winehouse’s label just before she died which was never released, and has recently released a new solo album called Definitely Now. I’m not sure it’s the most stylistically coherent record ever recorded (it lurches from Hendrix to rock blues to soul and R&B) but there are a number of fantastic tracks on it, my favourite of which is ‘Battle Hymn of Central London’.
And while it’s not exactly a standard, I’ve also been listening to Nada Surf’s wonderful 2012 album, The Stars Are Indifferent To Astronomy.
As well as newer music there are a number of artists I’ve been listening to ever since I was a teenager and finding new pleasure in every time I go back to them. One is Dylan, who I’ve mentioned above, and who continues to be as perplexing and brilliant and elusive in his 70s as he was in his 20s, but I’m also a long-term Bowie fan, and although I get endless pleasure out of all his work I also go through patches of being fascinated by particular albums, most recently Aladdin Sane, the unfairly neglected Lodger and Low (the latter is doubly interesting because it’s so clearly a product of the process of collaborative studio experimentation that makes his work so interesting, a subject that’s explored in fascinating detail in Hugo Wilcken’s excellent 33 1/3 book about Low). I could listen to ‘Sound and Vision’ on repeat a thousand times and not get bored.
Another is Elvis Costello. I discovered Costello when I was 15, and I stumbled on Armed Forces. More than 30 years later I’m still listening to him and finding pleasure in his spiky melodies and brilliant lyrics, his delight in music and musical history, and in his thrillingly prolific preparedness to try new things. And while I love pretty much all his work (although I’m not sure I ever need to hear the albums he did with T. Bone Burnett a few years ago again), and I tend to come back to particular albums like When I Was Cruel and Brutal Youth pretty regularly, it’s the early albums, in particular the first three, Armed Forces, My Aim Is True and This Year’s Model that I love the most. Having said that, here’s a clip of one of my all-time favourite songs of his (and indeed all-time favourite songs), ‘London’s Brilliant Parade’.
And finally, inevitably, there are the Beatles. Almost 50 years since they broke up they remain as remarkable and as singular as ever. I tend to neglect the early material in favour of the albums from Revolver onwards (an album that makes me happy every time I hear it (although lately I’ve been particularly fascinated by the wonderful sparseness of George Martin’s production on the stereo remasters of Revolver, particularly on tracks like ‘Taxman’)), but just lately I’ve been listening to A Hard Day’s Night, Beatles for Sale, Help and the other records from 1964 and 1965 (as well as Let It Be, but I’m always listening to Let It Be), which has meant I’ve rediscovered songs like ‘Ticket To Ride’, ‘Day Tripper’ and ‘I Feel Fine’ (that feedback buzz at the beginning still gives me goose bumps), which has been a lot of fun, and seem to prefigure the effortlessness of later songs like McCartney’s ‘Hello, Goodbye’.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xilr3e_the-beatles-hello-goodbye-high-quality_music
