Canongate Books Listen On Music, Sound and Us.

by Michel Faber

This book is, at its core, about music and the people who listen to it—your friends, your neighbors and you.

A fresh approach toward our cultural and sensical relationship to sound, this melodic examination of the world of music explores two big questions:  How do we listen to music and why do we listen to it in the first place? From a range of factors that shape our experience of sound—biology, age, illness and more— Listen  challenges the very dichotomy between “good” and “bad” music.

Lyrically woven and deeply evocative, Michel Faber’s nonfiction debut reflects his lifelong passion for music of all kinds.  Listen  will change your relationship with the heard world.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, 21st Century, Sociology, Art, Psychology, Audiobook

368 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2024

About the author

Michel Faber (born 13 April 1960) is a Dutch writer of English-language fiction.

Faber was born in The Hague, The Netherlands. He and his parents emigrated to Australia in 1967. He attended primary and secondary school in the Melbourne suburbs of Boronia and Bayswater, then attended the University of Melbourne, studying Dutch, philosophy, rhetoric, English language (a course involving translation and criticism of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English texts) and English literature. He graduated in 1980. He worked as a cleaner and at various other casual jobs, before training as a nurse at Marrickville and Western Suburbs hospitals in Sydney. He nursed until the mid-1990s. In 1993 he, his second wife and family emigrated to Scotland, where they still reside.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

He can be a little bit cheeky, can Michel. One reason you may be reading his book

is that you’re not that interested in music at all, but you loved The Crimson Petal and the White or Under the Skin or The Book of New Strange Things and, in the absence of any more novels by Michel Faber, you thought you’d give my non-fiction a try.

I loved all three of his novels and I’m a music fan, so this book was in my hands as soon as I saw it.

WE ARE NOT ADULT ORIENTATED



What this book isn’t is Michel Faber’s 100 Favourite Records and why you should like them. But I am hoping that he will rapidly produce a follow-up called Michel Faber’s 100 Favourite Records And Why You Should Like Them. What this book is is a whole lot of essays on all kinds of interesting aspects of music such as why people who don’t like music at all are considered to be freaks*, whether there is a hierarchy of greatness in music, the sadness of not being able to sing, the macho ridiculousness of very loud concerts**, music and babies, music and elephants, and so on. Some way more interesting than others. I skipped over the little babies and the elephants.

He has a chapter on how we are supposed to deal with music we love when it is made by men we loathe*** subtitled “On Rolf Harris, R Kelly and Morrissey” and one which trashes vinyl snobbery and one which says autotune is perfectly fine, and so is lipsynching the vocals at live gigs (Aretha never had to leap and cavort like a ballerina whilst hitting every big note). Meaning that the Milli Vanilli scandal was fashioned out of pure naivete. And a melancholy chapter about how the charity shops are silting up with the MOR albums bought in the 60s and 70s, brought in by 50 and 60 year olds when their 80 and 90 year old parents have died.

THOUGH THE WORLD IS MY OYSTER IT’S ONLY A SHELL



Michel has some pleasantly waspish observations to make about this stuff called music. He is keen for us to understand that it’s mostly used as a mental room spray and is not listened to as a thing in itself:

The sort of engagement with music in which the person focuses on the music for its own sake, rather than “having it on” in the background, during some other activity, accounts for just 2 percent of all listening

And whilst being a fan of avantgarde stuff like Einstürzende Neubauten and even Revolution 9 on the White Album he has a perfectly old fogey-style get-off-my-lawn rantlet about this modern rubbish (modern = the last 20 years) :

In the 21st century, even those records which are deemed to be “catchy” are seldom melodious in the way that songs by Cole Porter or The Beatles or even Nirvana were. Typically, they rely on a perseverating pattern of two or three notes, which the songwriters of yesteryear would’ve regarded as a mere fragment rather than a tune or a riff worthy of the name.

And his out and proud tirade against classical music and all its insufferable superiority is such fun.
All those prestige orchestras…are nothing more than tribute bands

Ha haah! That is, just like Nerdvana or Pink Fraud, they try to perfectly reproduce the sounds of their heroes, in their case Beethoven and Mahler and so on.

AIN’T NO SWEET MAN WORTH THE SALT OF MY TEARS



He has a chapter on music that makes him cry when he really isn’t a crier. There was one part of this chapter that nearly made me cry – he quotes these lines from a sad Sandy Denny song:

And maybe, by the evening, we’ll be laughing
Just wait and see
All the changes there’ll be
By the time it gets dark

And he adds this note :

Readers may be interested to know what was involved in quoting these lyrics for you And he gives the history of which big companies successively owned the copyright to Sandy’s song. In the end, Warner Chappell charged me £1000 to quote from the song. A thousand quid for those three lines? They ain’t Shakespeare you know! I would have told Warner Chappell to shove their thousand quid where the sun don’t shine.

I was wondering which song would be most likely to draw tears from my ducts and I think it would be "The Green Fields of France" by Davy Arthur and the Fureys :

Well, how do you do, Private Willie McBride?
Do you mind if I sit here down by your graveside?
And rest for a while in the warm summer sun
I've been walking all day, and I'm nearly done
I see by your gravestone you were only nineteen
When you joined the great fallen in 1916

… it all gets too much….

WILL I LOOK BACK AND SAY THAT I WISH I HADN'T DONE WHAT I DID?



This is of course RECOMMENDED, like a few great evenings with a dear friend chattering about everything and anything but mostly about that magical stuff that can cause ecstasy and pain, love and regret, excitations and melancholia and make new worlds appear in a second, and sometimes all of this at once.

Notes


*Vladimir Nabokov:
Music, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds. …the concert piano and all wind instruments bore me in small doses and flay me in larger ones.

**The ultimate in contemporary absurdity is a concert where the performers and the audience are all wearing ear plugs. Such concerts are already happening, partly because capitalism loves to create new problems with expensive solutions.

***For a fuller debate see Monsters : A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ik las nog geen enkele roman van Michel Faber, maar ken wel enkele mensen die lyrisch deden over Lelieblank, scharlakenrood. Daar ben ik nooit aan begonnen, maar dat deze fictie-auteur de moeite heeft genomen om een lijvig boek over muziek te schrijven, interesseerde me wel. Muziek, in al haar verschijningsvormen, was voor mij al een eclectische passie voor de literatuur zijn intrede deed. De combinatie van de twee is niet altijd boeiend gebleken, maar steeds verrijkend. 'Luister' is daar ook zo'n voorbeeld van.

Michel Faber is ongetwijfeld een grotere, maar vooral ándere muziekliefhebber dan ik. Zoveel was me van bij het begin duidelijk. En duidelijk is de schrijver ook, want hij waarschuwt er in zijn introductie voor dat we van hem geen conventioneel boek over muziek moeten verwachten en dat we niet veel meer over zijn immense muziekverzameling zullen te weten komen. Het gaat Faber meer om de sociologische, psychologische en neurologische kant van de zaak. Over hoe wij zelf (op verschillende niveaus) over muziek denken, praten, ernaar luisteren en er al dan niet ontroerd door raken, inclusief een soms ontluisterend antwoord op de redenen waarom we dat doen.

Aanvankelijk vond ik het maar een saaie en richtingloze leeservaring met een auteur die zijn eigen, niet meteen sympathieke persoonlijkheid en zijn relatief extreme en avant-gardistische muziekvoorkeuren van de pagina's laat spatten. Als lezer durf je niet meteen tegengas geven, hoewel je lang niet altijd akkoord gaat met zijn overtuigingen. Toch slaagde Faber erin me te doen nadenken over een aantal vastgeroeste muziekgerelateerde onderwerpen en wist hij gaandeweg mijn horizon te verbreden.

Hij werd ook milder naarmate het boek naar het einde toe meer over het emotionele van onze muziekbeleving gaat. Zeker het hoofdstuk 'De Vinylkerk', waarin hij met de nodige technologische en wetenschappelijke argumenten aantoont dat de zogenaamde 'warme klank' die ook ik associeer met de klank van vinylplaten, niets te maken heeft met analoge authenticiteit (die eigenlijk niet bestaat), maar met de auditieve neveneffecten van de naald in het vinylspoor. Dat hij toegeeft zelf ook die vinylwarmte te ervaren, niettegenstaande de kwalitatieve voordelen van een gedigitaliseerde versie of een mastertape, toonde aan dat hij dan toch menselijker en emotioneler is dan ik aanvankelijk dacht.

Lang niet alle hoofdstukken boeiden me. Zeker niet die waarin hij interviews of youtube-comments aan elkaar rijgt om zijn punt te maken. Zoals wel vaker gebeurt, is Faber op zijn best als hij het heeft over zaken die hem persoonlijk na aan het hart liggen. Oorspronkelijk moet het blijkbaar een nog veel lijviger boek zijn geweest, maar dat zag zijn uitgever (wijselijk) niet zitten. Deze 400 pagina's waren mij meer dan genoeg en hadden best nog wat ingekort kunnen worden. Gelukkig viel er net genoeg te rapen om niet af te haken.

[Fletcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Deeply unsatisfying meandering nonsense

[Dolf van der Haven · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about... Something. Something related to music, probably more about the appreciation of music, not about the technicalities or history, but something else. The author (who is claimed by both the Dutch, Australians and Scottish as one of theirs) has a hard time defining what his book is about exactly and who should read it and why. He covers a lot of bases, happily flaunts his music collection and rambles on and on for 450 pages. Some parts are interesting, others not so. He definitely has a hard time coming to any conclusion in his chapters.
Ultimately, he probably mostly wrote this book for himself. Others may appreciate some of it as well.

[Bob · Rating 2 out of 5]

After the first 2 chapters I was convinced this was going to be a solid 5 star. It fell off that wagon quickly.

Half the book is the author recounting YouTube comments. Or listing obscure names or other random items that aren’t really relevant to anything. There’s chapters where he recounts his history and his inability to get nostalgic or cry. And even the parts about music aren’t really about music. They’re about how he hates the music industry or thinks most consumers are stupid for preferring Billy Joel over crappy noise-rock.

This book was a serious let down after it showed such possibility up front. I stuck to it until the end but I’m not sure why…

[ash · Rating 1 out of 5]

As previously mentioned, this very much sounds like a book for me, but I will never find out if it's even possible to get the information I want from it as this man is so god damn insufferable and condescending that I'm not bothering to proceed past page 25. As other men have proven time and time again, if you're going to write a book about music that is also about yourself, you really can be just the worst, but you have to be good at writing and have a decent voice to make up for it. Faber is not and does not.

[Jaïr · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the best book you will ever read on music perception, business, cratedigging culture and what have you. Much better than David Byrne and Rick Rubin combined, and I am writing this as a lover of both Byrne's and Rubin's creative output over the years. Each and every page makes me want to highlight several quotes and insta the living hell out of this gem. A must read if there ever was one. Unputdownable and a truly joyful experience I haven't had with nonfiction for quite some time.

[Kade · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book accomplishes nothing, it begins with the sensational claim that it’ll change your perspective of music forever but it does nothing of the sort, the author rambles and rambles driving no clear message on music but rather disjointed antidotal stories from his personal life about how music makes him feel and how he incorporates it in his life. Don’t waste your time

[Carmen Daza Márquez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ojalá traduzcan pronto este libro al español, porque sus cuatrocientas y pico páginas deberían ser leídas por toda persona que se declare amante de la música en cualquiera de sus facetas. Michel Faber es un novelista australiano de origen holandés afincado en Gran Bretaña, lo que unido a sus 65 años de edad le da una visión panorámica y plurinacional en el terreno de la música de la que carece la mayoría de los angloparlantes. El autor tiene además una historia familiar truculenta y una neurodivergencia, lo que se combina con su ADN neerlandés para hacer de él un comunicador bastante directo, rotundo y poco diplomático en sus afirmaciones.
Todo esto quiere decir que Listen es un libro bastante poco complaciente que antes o después va a acabar irritando al lector, como demuestra la infinidad de comentarios negativos que está cosechando esta obra. Pero quien ame realmente la música y esté dispuesto a admitir que sus gustos y preferencias pueden no ser el canon universal que nos gustaría que fueran, podrá disfrutar en gran medida de las reflexiones de Michel Faber en este libro, por muy discutibles que resulten algunas de ellas.

Al parecer, la obra originalmente era aún más extensa y el autor se vio obligado a eliminar varias partes de la misma para que pudiera ser publicada. Quizás por esto se llega a tener la sensación en algunos momentos de una falta de conexión entre las partes y de que se salta de un capítulo a otro sin que realmente haya un hilo conductor que los una. Pero Faber es un escritor y narrador estupendo, a diferencia de muchos otros que escriben sobre música tal vez con mayor conocimiento de causa pero con mucho menos talento narrativo. Y su punto de vista personalísimo y subjetivo, confesional por momentos, resulta tremendamente atractivo para quien prefiera leer opiniones y experiencias más que dictados maximalistas.

Este libro ha sido una compañía muy agradable durante los días que ha durado su lectura y me ha dejado unas cuantas perspectivas muy valiosas y alguna canción que otra. Realmente no se le puede pedir más a una obra de este tipo.

[Benjamin Van Vliet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. Yes, it’s all over the place and a bit messy, but that’s totally fitting with the nature of music and our relationship(s) to it. Music and how we treat it doesn’t really make any sense, when you start to think of it, and is full of contradictions. And I’ve never read a book that shows this as well as this one does.

[David Sogge · Rating 1 out of 5]

Recommended by The Syllabus, this book seemed to promise a lot. But in order to get anything out of it, a reader has to be well-acquainted with Anglo-American pop music and its makers, and be able to enjoy the book's chatty prose in a pop-colloquial idiom. It's a nothingburger. Why The Syllabus (Morozov & co) plugged this book is a mystery to me.

=postscript 18 September 2024=
Further to what I wrote seven months ago (above), it's worth mentioning that a recent review, in Dutch, of Listen by a seasoned Dutch observer of culture Thomas Heerma van Voss, is consistent with many critical views here on Goodreads. Apart from its lack of editorial clarity and discipline, van Voss concludes that the book simply fails to come to grips with matters it seems to promise about music, namely "how does this ‘miracle’ work? And who actually decides what people do and don’t listen to, and why?"

[Casey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This just wasn’t for me. I was hoping for something that would go deep into how musical preferences shape our perception of music, what drives our preferences, and the cultural/tribal aspect of those preferences. Instead, this felt like various lines of thought that (sometimes tenuously) touched on an aspect of music or the authors experience with it.

[Natasha Beaulieu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michel Faber is honest about listening to music, but if you listen closely you also hear the life of a fascinating, atypical human being, sometimes a little annoying, but undeniably a writer of great talent. He surely knows how to get Under your skin might it be about music or other stuff. Thank you mister Faber.

[Harry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meandered a lot, but still lots of interesting nuggets

[Lisastrawberry]

Had to return the book before I finished it, but it was losing a little steam before I had to do so.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this more than many music books. There's a wide range of topics. I'm not sure it's intentional, but the author does come across as a little condescending at times. He seems rager to set aside the true music believers, which obviously includes himself and anyone who would read the book.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe much can be determined about how one orients themselves to the human experience based on they feel about this book. Most humans are visually driven, but some of us are wired differently and we lead with our ears. If this is you, this book is a delight.

In a nutshell…if you don’t enjoy it, it’s likely because you’re simply not listening. You won’t recognize all of Michel’s subtle and nuanced observations about how we process and interpret the world through our ears. The aurally-inclined reader (or listener) will feel seen and heard by knowing that someone else out there has thought as deeply about the sonic experience as you have.

Mr. Faber’s sharp wit and incredibly insightful take on these subjects is a perfect pairing. This is easily the most enjoyable book about sound and music that I’ve ever had the pleasure of ingesting.

[David A.Burris · Rating 1 out of 5]

This a very generous one star review. If you truly love music, do not read this book. Because the author clearly doesn’t.

Anyone who writes “Has the music I love ever done for me what the music of Chris DeBurgh has done for his fans? I don’t believe so. I can’t think of any jazz or psychedelic soul that has helped me through tough times or allowed me to lose myself… when I go through tough times I tend to stop playing music altogether.”

WTF. If this is true then he should not be writing a book about music. If he cannot lose himself in music or has not had music help him when he was having a rough go of it, then he doesn’t truly love music. Or even understand it.

He. Does. Not. Get. It.

He is allowed to enjoy music on his own terms, fine. But presuming to write about it was a mistake.

I think the big message he wanted to communicate to the reader was that he had written a “few novels that were liked by quite a few people”. Almost every chapter had some reference to him being a published novelist. Fuck me, man, shut up about it.

[Katia Mullova · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deep dive on why we like the music we like. The author is both irreverent (about the idea of inherently good music) and passionate (about why that is), provocative nerd vibes with a dry sense of humour. ‘Saves himself from seeming snobbish by calling himself out as snobbish’ kinda thing.

The chapters are short and intentional, each one considering a different angle on the main question. Why does a person (or animal?) react the way they do to music? Obv there are the big room bangers like personal relationships, social background, industry forces, but also neat curve balls, like: what about people who don’t like music at all? Some of my favourite chapters were music and disability, how children interact with ‘taste’, and how the English speaking world neglected non-English pop music.

Tbh he covered so much ground that i could use a reread down the line, plus there is clearly a goldmine of musical obscurities inside which I mostly didn't look up as I was reading. I'd never heard of the top selling female artist of all time - apparently not unusual - and I want to check her out.

I was also pretty here for his voice by the end, although he’d come off as almost intentionally obnoxious in the very first chapters, but after he’s done challenging you to dislike him, his inquisitive open mind shines through. Would recommend to anyone interested in music as social or biological phenomenon - it goes into places I wouldn’t expect to be taken.

[Kyle Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was fine. Parts of it were great, parts of it were entirely skippable. Would have really benefitted from an editor more willing to cut chapters and refine the focus of a few more, but there's definitely the core of a great book in here. I really enjoyed the sections diving into the Anglocentric "canon" of Western music (and the various things that have been excluded from it), the discussions of the sociocultural determinants for our music tastes, and generally all the ways in which we "use" music/art culturally. We don't just listen—we curate our libraries, we publicly share our music tastes, we deride and judge "bad" music, and all of those actions serve a purpose socially. Every part of the book about those filters—both (A) what music we get exposed to and (B) what music we choose to reflect back out into the cultural ether—is great. Faber gets it, he's appropriately deflationary about the significance of music without diminishing how worthy of our love and attention it is. Just a bit too long and unfocused, particularly in the last few chapters.

[Mark Rance · Rating 2 out of 5]

To be honest, I could not get past the author’s persona. To mimic it I would say of this book that it is one of those to practice your speed reading techniques. Or, at one point the author is sitting at dinner with a too formal for him classical pianist from Iceland who he describes as being “straight jacketed” into his suit; but they’re both wearing straight jackets.

It’s well researched and there are plenty of quotes by musicians and critics worth discovering. But as I said, in the end, the author is too much for my or anybody’s mirror.

[Arjen Doosje · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mwoeah, dit boek gaat echt alle kanten op. Ook op punten die niks (of ver verwijderd) met muziek te maken hebben. Het hoofdstuk over Wikipedia bijvoorbeeld. Ook kon ik moeilijk mee in de weergave van aantal gesprekken die over zwart-wit gingen. In mijn optiek allemaal ballast. Blijft helaas niet hangen en kon me alleen in de afsluitende woorden vinden die erop neerkomen dat je gewoon moet luisteren waar je blij van wordt en niet door anderen moet laten voorschrijven wat mooi is en wat niet. Ja, daar heb ik geen honderden bladzijden voor nodig.

[Nick Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

More than anything this book is Michel dumping his thoughts on music. Second to that it is a stealth autobiography.

There were moments of interest and sections that were difficult to plow through but personally because of this book I listened to Richard Dawson's album 2020 and Maggie Holland for the first time. I'm glad I read it.

[Antoni · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a lot of people it’s probably rather pointless. It’s got some stats and facts, but that’s not what this. It’s a guy dedicating a chapter on each and every conversation I’ve had with myself on music. This book won’t change your life, and probably won’t even change your mind. But it’s nice to have these conversations with someone.

[HTP Books]

Philosophy & Social Aspects in Music, Music Genres & Styles, History & Criticism in Music

[Klaas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything you ever want to know about music and how and why you relate to it. This book struck a chord with me - pun intended…

[Brittany · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF. Had high hopes for the concept and found this disappointingly stitched together: personal musings and rambling article length passages.

[Alex Freund · Rating 1 out of 5]

Topic and subject matter is what drew me in.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get past the choppy wording and side tangents. Especially since I am known for my long winded wordings.

[Margaret Wade · Rating 2 out of 5]

he just talked about himself the whole time. struggled to get through.

[Bookreporter.com Biography & Memoir · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the most disorienting, even ominous, things that Michel Faber reveals in LISTEN might seem like a mere triviality to deeply committed bibliophiles. This book was originally intended to be twice as long. I don’t know if Faber ever admitted the same about any of his previous 11 books (such as THE CRIMSON PETAL AND THE WHITE or UNDER THE SKIN), which have received well-deserved critical acclaim.

With LISTEN, however, I think Faber did the right thing. After reading 450 fast-turning but often deeply arresting pages, I doubt if any world-changing observations and assertions about humankind and organized sound were omitted --- not, at least, from his highly personal and subjective lived experience.

That is what makes LISTEN as much a memoir as it is an entertaining and often provocative sociological study of popular soundscapes, wherever in the world we encounter them. In fact, I’m still not sure if sociology or autobiography wins out here. Perhaps the constant (but not unpleasant) tension I felt as these two currents tugged at me throughout every anecdote, assertion, argument, analysis and old-fashioned rant was meant to be the “orchestration” of a book Faber says he’s always wanted to write.

Within some 30 chapters, with quirky titles like “Sorry for Your Lost,” “Where I Got My Parka,” “A Needle Through Your Brow” or “Impossible to Hear” (many even more eccentric), Faber gathers clustered musings on some very important things about music and popular entertainment in general --- things one might never suspect.

I encountered substantial content in his reflections about how we listen to all genres of music on multiple levels --- neurologically, physically, emotionally and conditionally. On more than one occasion, and in various contexts, Faber delves deeply into where our responses come from, what evokes attraction or distaste, and how encounters with styles outside one’s lived experience can completely reverse the polarity of musical preference.

The whole question of “taste” in music comes up for repeated examination, and whether we like it or not, it deserves to be addressed. In Faber’s world, poor musical taste, as hard as that is to quantify, results from deficiencies ranging from ignorance to racism. He apologizes (likely with tongue-in-cheek) for pushing our buttons or offending our sensibilities, suggesting that too much about formal music --- music that makes money --- is class elitist and programmed for emotionless mass consumption. Think elevators, airports, shopping malls and phones on eternal hold.

In covering myriad aspects of a subject obviously dear to both his heart and intellect, Faber inevitably comes out with critical remarks on a wide spectrum of popular performers, and no reader will agree with all (or even a fraction) of them. And he likely won’t satisfy anyone who comes to LISTEN in anticipation of startling new knowledge or insight about their preferred genre, be it Renaissance consort dances, high Baroque oratorio, grunge rock, atonal serialism, late Romanticism or New Age. The list goes on and on.

But when you consider how ubiquitous music really is, how it seeps in through every pore, every preconception, every emotion and every spirituality, one begins to truly appreciate it as not merely a whole body experience, but a whole being one. Music can take it. For uncounted centuries, it has survived the cynics, the haters, the incompetent, the maniacally driven, the tyrannical and the narcissistic, as well as all the good things humans have managed to cultivate in the potentiality of our species.

In writing LISTEN, with all its obvious incongruities, suspended ideas, bold assertions, cranky protests and illuminating “aha” moments, Michel Faber was on to something. In a way, he has come up with the perfect anti-textbook --- an almost bullet-proof assurance that ordinary people, not the academically elite, will read it as eagerly and happily as I just did.

Reviewed by Pauline Finch