Charlie Recommends… May 2021
By Charlie Gladstone#1
New Yorkers: A City and Its People in our Time by Craig Taylor is absolutely wonderful. Taylor spent months (or maybe years) in the city interviewing residents and this is the distillation of those conversations. It is moving, fascinating, sad, cheerful, ridiculous and completely alive and I can’t recommend it highly enough.
#2
Peter Buchanan Smith founded the magical axe maker Best Made Co.. His new book Buchanan Smith’s Axe Handbook is an absolute must for anyone even remotely interested in the oldest tool known to mankind. Before Best Made Co. Peter was a graphic designer who worked on record sleeves for artists such as Wilco and David Byrne, so this is a beautiful book too.
#3
David Hockney and Martin Gayford’s book Spring Cannot be Cancelled is truly great. It’s a beautiful book that talks eloquently and approachably about art and it made me look at spring through fresh eyes. I then read the first book that they wrote together, A Bigger Message, which was nearly as good. I love you, David Hockney.
#4
Wintering. A Season with Geese by Stephen Rutt, is a lovely evocation of the magic of migrating geese.
#5
Unforgotten is TV drama at its best. Brilliant!
All of the series are great as is Innocent, by the same writer. I am really enjoying Halston too, which stars Ewen McGregor as the fabled fashion designer. If you haven’t heard of Halston, think of Sister Sledge’s Greatest Dancer…’Halston, Gucci, Fiorucci’. Now try getting that out of your head.
#6
Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and The London Symphony Orchestra have made a record together, which I love, called Promises. It’s part classical, part jazz, part ambient and the Guardian gave it 5 stars and called it ‘extraordinary’. I agree.
#7
I should also put a word in for Paul Weller at this point, who has yet another new album out called Fat Pop. Once upon a time, when the Jam and Style Council were at their peak, I lived for Weller. I lost touch with him sometime during the last couple of decades, but recently I’ve found myself listening to him a bit. Fat Pop is by no means his best work but its proof that he’s truly alive and inspired and given that we must be around 50 years since he first released a record, he is to be saluted!
#8
I’m Not a Monster is a brilliant long-form podcast about a couple who take their children to join ISIS.
#9
The Dropout, The Rise and Fall of Elizabeth Holmes is an almost unbelievable tale of America’s youngest female billionaire and how she turned out to be a total fake.
