These novels about music get close to what happens when people try to make a sound together. A Dublin soul band has to get through rehearsal without splitting up. A string quartet has to learn how four players can…
Items 37 The creator’s order
1 Daisy Jones & The Six Daisy Jones and the members of the Six tell competing versions of how they made a landmark album together. Start here if you want the difference between what two singers can pull off in a studio and what they can admit to each other afterward. 0 2 The Final Revival of Opal & Nev Rock journalist S. Sunny Shelton goes back through accounts of Opal Jewel and Nev Charles, whose partnership crossed musical and racial lines in the 1970s. Choose this if you want to see how access to a microphone can change who gets to explain a performance and its consequences. 0 3 Utopia Avenue Folk singer Elf, guitarist Jasper, bassist Dean, and drummer Griff each bring a different vocabulary into the same late-1960s London band. Follow the songs in the chapter titles to watch whose voice moves forward as a group learns what it can sound like together. 0 4 The Ensemble The four players in the Van Ness Quartet spend years trying to live together artistically as their lives outside rehearsals change. It is an especially good pick for anyone who wants a small group with no escape from listening closely to each other. 0 5 The Commitments Jimmy Rabbitte recruits musicians to turn Dublin into a soul town. The quick back-and-forth makes even a chaotic rehearsal feel like a performance. Pick it for a short comic read about the gap between wanting a band and sharing a room with one. 0 6 Songs in Ursa Major Jane Quinn and her band, the Breakers, get a chance to step onto a festival stage when Jesse Reid cannot play. Follow Jane from that opening through touring and recording if you like stories where a mentor, a lover, and an industry connection can all be the same person. 0 7 The Air You Breathe Dores writes songs and Graça sings them as they move from a sugar plantation to the samba scene in Rio. Read this for the way two friends' talents fit together until the music business gives one of them much more room to be seen. 0 8 Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, The tie-in (1989) Published Jan 1, 1989 The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
Two brothers who leave Havana build a dance-band career in New York. Watching the orchestra perform at night gives their different approaches to love, ambition, and songwriting a shared setting. Choose this for a story in which staying in a band also means… 0 9 Espedair Street Danny Weir, songwriter and bassist for Frozen Gold, looks back on the people who made the songs and what the band's success cost them. Try it for an older musician reckoning with the parts of group history a hit record cannot preserve. 0 10 A Visit from the Goon Squad The people around record producer Bennie Salazar and his assistant Sasha narrate the chapters from different points in time. Pick it if you want to move from teen band practice to record production and rediscover an earlier musical partnership from the perspective of someone on its edges. 0 
Daisy Jones & The SixDaisy Jones and the members of the Six tell competing versions of how they made a landmark album together. Start here if you want the difference between what two singers can pull off in a studio and what they can admit to each other afterward.0
The Final Revival of Opal & NevRock journalist S. Sunny Shelton goes back through accounts of Opal Jewel and Nev Charles, whose partnership crossed musical and racial lines in the 1970s. Choose this if you want to see how access to a microphone can change who gets to explain a performance and its consequences.0
Utopia AvenueFolk singer Elf, guitarist Jasper, bassist Dean, and drummer Griff each bring a different vocabulary into the same late-1960s London band. Follow the songs in the chapter titles to watch whose voice moves forward as a group learns what it can sound like together.0
The EnsembleThe four players in the Van Ness Quartet spend years trying to live together artistically as their lives outside rehearsals change. It is an especially good pick for anyone who wants a small group with no escape from listening closely to each other.0
The CommitmentsJimmy Rabbitte recruits musicians to turn Dublin into a soul town. The quick back-and-forth makes even a chaotic rehearsal feel like a performance. Pick it for a short comic read about the gap between wanting a band and sharing a room with one.0
Songs in Ursa MajorJane Quinn and her band, the Breakers, get a chance to step onto a festival stage when Jesse Reid cannot play. Follow Jane from that opening through touring and recording if you like stories where a mentor, a lover, and an industry connection can all be the same person.0
The Air You BreatheDores writes songs and Graça sings them as they move from a sugar plantation to the samba scene in Rio. Read this for the way two friends' talents fit together until the music business gives one of them much more room to be seen.0
Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, The tie-in (1989)Published Jan 1, 1989The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Two brothers who leave Havana build a dance-band career in New York. Watching the orchestra perform at night gives their different approaches to love, ambition, and songwriting a shared setting. Choose this for a story in which staying in a band also means…0
Espedair StreetDanny Weir, songwriter and bassist for Frozen Gold, looks back on the people who made the songs and what the band's success cost them. Try it for an older musician reckoning with the parts of group history a hit record cannot preserve.0
A Visit from the Goon SquadThe people around record producer Bennie Salazar and his assistant Sasha narrate the chapters from different points in time. Pick it if you want to move from teen band practice to record production and rediscover an earlier musical partnership from the perspective of someone on its edges.0