Music reviews & criticism

Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music

’An absolutely masterly work’ Stephen Fry

Alex Ross, renowned author of the international bestseller The Rest Is Noise, reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for modern art and politics—an aesthetic war zone where the Western world wrestled with its capacity for beauty and violence.

Too Fast to Live Too Young to Die: Punk & post punk graphics 1976-1986

Praise for the Too Fast To Live Too Young To Die exhibition:

“A fascinating look at how punk and new wave music met the eye” New York Times

“An absolute joy” Financial Times

The largest unique collection of printed memorabilia from the punk and post-punk movements.

Why Dylan Matters

A GUARDIAN AND INDEPENDENT BEST MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEAR

‘At last an expert classicist gets to grips with Bob Dylan’ Mary Beard

‘Thomas’s elegant, charming book offers something for everyone – not just the super-fans’ Independent

Listen to This

Includes a new chapter on John Cage.

Alex Ross’s award-winning international best-seller, ‘The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century’, has become a contemporary classic, establishing him as one of our most popular and acclaimed cultural historians; this is his much anticipated next book on the subject of music.

Red Hot Chili Peppers: An Oral/Visual History

Explosive, uncensored and always revelatory, Red Hot Chili Peppers is the long-awaited, never-before-told history of the globe’s most worshipped rock band. Loaded with rare and unpublished photographs and memorabilia from their own archives, the band finally reveal all, allowing unprecedented access into their wild inner world.

Patti Smith

Patti Smith was a poet, a punk prophet, a feminist icon, a living work of art and the first woman rock-outsider to come from the New York underground and become a star.

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