Vocal Break: On Women, Music and Power

Lauren Elkin

"It took me ten years to go from shy young girl to punk rocker, if I’d had this book I’d have got there much quicker." Viv Albertine

In Vocal Break, Lauren Elkin seamlessly blends memoir, feminist manifesto and cultural history to explore a plurality of female singing voices – and how women have used them to defy convention, genre, capitalism, racism and sexism. Drawing on her own experiences training as a young soprano in the 1990s, Elkin reflects on the way power and identity shape our voices, focusing on the women who most excited her when she was learning to sing.

Even the Good Girls Will Cry: My 90s Rock Memoir

Melissa Auf der Maur

Thanks to a thrown beer bottle and a fan letter to a P.O. box, Melissa Auf der Maur's first band scored an opening slot for the Smashing Pumpkins in her bohemian home town, Montreal. Sensing Melissa's talent, Billy Corgan recommended her to Courtney Love. Whisked from her local scene, Melissa joined Hole just after the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Hole's prior bassist, Kristen Pfaff, with the just-widowed Courtney Love at the centre of it all.

That was only the beginning of Melissa's journey through alternative rock, a trip she undertook alongside 90s luminaries including Rufus Wainwright, Michael Stipe and her former boyfriend, Dave Grohl.

Even the Good Girls Will Cry is a vivid dispatch from the last analogue decade, capturing that bygone era in all its messy, angsty glory.

Bread of Angels

Patti Smith

God whispers through a crease in the wallpaper, writes Patti Smith in this indelible account of her life as an artist.

A post-Second World War childhood unfolds in a condemned housing complex described in Dickensian detail: consumptive children, vanishing neighbours, an infested rat house, and a beguiling book of Irish fairytales. We enter the child's world of the imagination where Smith, the captain of her loyal and beloved sibling army, vanquishes bullies, communes with the king of tortoises and searches for sacred silver pennies.

The most intimate of Smith's memoirs, Bread of Angels takes us through her teenage years where the first glimmers of art and romance take hold. Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan emerge as creative heroes and role models as Patti starts to write poetry, then lyrics, merging both into the iconic songs and recordings such as Horses and Easter, 'Dancing Barefoot' and 'Because the Night'.

Tonight the Music Seems So Loud: The Meaning of George Michael

Sathnam Sanghera

Tonight the Music Seems So Loud is at once a kaleidoscopic portrait of one of Britain's most beloved musicians and an account of a strange and turbulent period of British history.

In his unconventional and enthralling book, bestselling author Sathnam Sanghera explores the connection between music and politics, exposes what secrecy does to the soul, and reveals how fame rots the sense of self. Throughout, Sanghera captures, joyfully and poignantly, one of Britain's greatest artists in all his musical glory.

Story of the Century

Michael Downes

A colourful and concise telling of the fascinating story behind Richard Wagner’s extraordinary masterpiece, Ring of the Nibelung.

In Story of the Century, Michael Downes combines cultural history and biography to offer this accessible and insightful introduction to The Ring and its mythology. He tells the story of how and why this extraordinary masterpiece came into being, why it takes the form it does, why it fascinates and obsesses so many and horrifies others, and why it matters.