Lyrics for Stacey Kent
February 15, 2024
The Nobel Prize-winning novelist reveals his inner Elvis Costello. "I've built a reputation over the years as a writer of stories," says Ishiguro, "but I started out writing songs." Never an underachiever, Ishiguro reveals that in fact he'd written more than 100 songs by the time his first novel, A Pale View of Hills, was underway. Though the songs, he allows, were "mostly ghastly," their writing provided a useful apprenticeship in verbal economy: Along the way, he notes before revealing any of the lyrics themselves, he learned from the challenges a song imposes, such as conveying meaning in just a few words, telling a story, and drawing a reader's emotions into the game without, one hopes, undue mawkishness. The present volume gathers a modest 16 songs, illustrated by Italian artist Bagnarelli, whose work is charmingly suggestive of the eerily whimsical productions of Japan's Studio Ghibli; the lyrics are matched, via the magic of a QR code, with recorded versions sung by jazz chanteuse Kent. When she told Ishiguro that his songs were sad, he replied, "However sad, however bleak the song became, there had to remain an element of hope." Sad some of the lyrics may be, but they're also craftily wordy in a way that Cole Porter might envy: It ain't "Begin the Beguine," but "I want to be awakened by a faulty fire alarm / In an overpriced hotel devoid of charm" has its evocative qualities, while Leonard Cohen might not have been displeased had he penned the lines "Like a bird caught mid-flight by a barb-wire fence / I kept going for a time before falling." Ishiguro isn't going to force Joni Mitchell into retirement, but it's a well-intended effort overall, and an interesting side note into a way of storytelling other than that for which the author is known. For fans of literate pop as much as of Ishiguro's body of work.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
May 1, 2024
The pleasures of this unique album of creative collaboration are many, beginning with Nobel laureate Ishiguro's introduction. Although he is known the world round as a fiction writer, his first literary passion was songwriting, which he pursued ardently throughout his teens and into his twenties. The author of eight novels, most recently Klara and the Sun (2021), and a short-story collection rooted in his love for music, Nocturnes (2009), Ishiguro notes that he worked through many early phases in his artistic evolution in songs, which he credits for his "pared-down style" and propensity for locating emotion "between the lines." He returned to songwriting at the invitation of revered jazz singer Stacey Kent, and her partner in music and life: saxophonist, composer, producer, and arranger Jim Tomlinson. Thirteen of Ishiguro's atmospheric, witty, and graceful lyrics about travel, longing, and love are published here with crisply drawn and evocatively composed illustrations by Italian artist Bianca Bagnarelli, images vibrant with unusual perspectives, reflections, shadows, and telling details. Readers will feel as though they're hearing Ishiguro's lyrics, but a QR code leads them to Kent's renditions.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.