Songs, the key of life

Music-loving novelist Michel Faber explores the psychology and sociology behind the sounds that keep us hooked.

- Michel Faber

Books of music criticism can be risky. There's a fine line between thought-provoking opinions about the state of the art and sounding like the dishevelled bloke who plonks down next to you at the pub one night and starts banging on about King Crimson.

Music writing should be prickly, though. You want it to poke at you like a phonographic needle, challenging your assumptions and likes while hopefully exposing you to some groovy new sounds.

Dutch-born, Australia-raised, UK-based Michel Faber is best known for inventive novels like Under The Skin and The Book of Strange New Things.

With Listen: On Music, Sound And Us he dives into nonfiction for a sweeping survey of how we engage with sound, in a work he calls "the book I've wanted to write all my life".

So, what sets Faber's work apart on a crowded section of the bookshelf? There's a long tradition of so-called "stale, pale males" like Lester Bangs, Nick Kent and Greil Marcus holding forth with certainty about why Bob Dylan or Lou Reed or The Clash changed the world.

"There's nothing more self-absorbed and tribal than music," Faber writes.

What gives Listen an edge is Faber's own wideeared willingness to hear new things, questioning his own opinions and much of music criticism's general vague ignorance of anything but friendly, English-language songs.