Intertextual, passionate and personal throughout, Crowded House's Together Alone is a key addition to the surprisingly limited range of scholarship on one of Australasia's most successful and adored bands.
Fusing pop music with place and landscape, Crowded House's Together Alone (1993) was unprecedented in its Australasian context, and in the process of making this album, the group's sound transformed profoundly. Crowded House's Together Alone examines why Neil Finn took the daring decision to record amid the wilds of Karekare Beach, West Auckland, considers how British producer Youth impacted the band's dynamics, and places the album within a wider artistic context, expanding beyond pop.
The book also recounts author Barnaby Smith's visit to Karekare on the trail of Together Alone's atmospheric melancholy – a psychogeographic adventure exploring what it means to visit a landscape under the spell of the music it has inspired. A song-by-song analysis further explores the fragile alchemy that produced the most poetic statement in the Crowded House catalogue.
Arvustused
This is an album where the land sings back and Smiths book listens closely. -- Laura Gordon * Happy Mag * A landmark addition Part music criticism, part memoir, and part landscape writing, Crowded Houses Together Alone is a must-read for fans of the band, scholars of popular music, and anyone interested in the interplay between place and creativity. * The Foundation For Australian & New Zealand Arts (FANZA) *
Muu info
A literary but accessible analysis of the much-loved Crowded House album Together Alone (1993), recorded in the Karekare wilderness and influenced by literature, the arts, philosophy and Maori beliefs.
List of Figures
1. The Little Phrase: Introduction
2. A Contrary Path: Context and Background
3. Stay on One String: The (Non-Finn) Key Players
4. Ancient Streams: At Karekare
5. Abstract Thought: Song by Song
6. The Alchemy Is Complete: Aftermath
Acknowledgements
References
Index
Barnaby Smith is an award-winning writer, editor, critic, musician and poet based in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia. He has written about music, art, literature and film for publications including The Quietus, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The Sydney Morning Herald, Australian Book Review, NME and the ABC.
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