Music, Man

A young musician recently asked me to compose the liner notes for his latest CD release. Writing about music of any kind must surely be the world's most pretentious occupation: this young man's music, for instance, can only be described as emanating from that rather anemic strain of wistfully melodic lo-fi pop that recalls the naive, awkward longings of playground romance. Once can almost imagine the lyrics scrawled on crumpled paper in pastel crayon passed through raindrop wet school gate railings with fumbling fingers and a low sigh.

Fortunately, the square cardboard covers of my old Scott Walker albums boast breezily grandiloquent descriptions of the musical contents recorded on the enclosed vinyl disc, profoundly effusive essays on the subject of the singer’s voice written in freewheelin’ 1960s sentence structures, and so consequently I will be using these examples of classic sleeve notation as a template for my own work in this uninhibited sphere of activity.