!NEWEST!
Kirkus Review review just in:
A hymn to a musical heyday.
In his introduction, Reynolds writes that this book is about “the last great phase of analogue music culture before the internet, filesharing, YouTube and, eventually, streaming and social media changed the way things worked”—in other words, before things went to crap for rock music. Reynolds, an English-born, stateside transplant and author of an intimidatingly tall stack of books on music, captures this bygone era in themed chapters, most chronicling a festival’s worth of bands. There’s usually a main act or two: Cocteau Twins are centered in the chapter “The Ethereal World,” the Smiths in “Heaven Knows I’m Miserabilist Now,” and Throwing Muses and Pixies in “I Bleed.” Nonexistent is the reader who will be familiar with all the bands, labels, and subgenres cited here, sometimes in sentences that could pass for indie-rock-nomenclature parody (“Bark Psychosis’ Graham Sutton…plunged full bore into the jungle scene, winning respect under the name Boymerang and releasing wholly convincing work on the ultrahip Metalheadz label”). But the uninitiated reader will roll with the esoterica because Reynolds’ assured and witty writing makes the book worth consuming like a novel. On Elizabeth Fraser’s vocals in a Cocteau Twins composition: “Mid-song there’s a wordless moan-roar that sounds like Fraser is literally giving birth to Björk”; twee-adjacent three-piece Galaxie 500 “weren’t so much a power trio as a frailty trio.” (To be clear, that’s not an insult.) As for the indie-rock subgenre “shoegaze,” Reynolds defines it as a musical form whose “basic function” is to be “a blanket of beautiful sadness for the sensitive young to wrap themselves in and doze into dreams.” This book can serve the same purpose.
A lambent elegy written for those who know that the best bands often don’t get inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
! AUTUMN MINI-TOUR !
Tuesday October 20 - ROCK 'N' ROLL BOOK CLUB, Walthamstow, London
Conversation with Daniel Avery + Kitty Empire - and audience Q+A
Time: doors open 6.30pm - event at 7.30- 9pm - followed by book signing
Location: Walthamstow Trades Hall, 61-63 Tower Hamlets Road
Wednesday October 21 - TROPICALL RECORDS, Bruxelles, Belgium
Conversation with Simon Taylor - audience Q+A - book signing
Time: 7pm
Location: Rue Haute 235, 1000
Tickets: at the door
Friday October 23 - BORDERKITCHEN, Den Haag, Nederlands
a Crossing Border Festival x Grauzone event
Conversation with Lee Brackstone - audience Q+A - book signing
Time: doors 7.30 - event starts 8pm
Location: BorderKitchen, Kerkstraat 13
Tickets
A MEDLEY OF REVIEWS + READER REACTIONS
"A history of the music twinned with an account of the music press that covered it. That slight dip into autobiography spurs grander questions about what the point of music and music criticism is... His statement on what all that work ultimately means is significant to me. Like Harold Bloom or David Thomson – the opinions are less valuable than the sheer enthusiasm with which they are expressed. A brilliant critic has the authority and verve to move you to try something you haven’t heard of before just through the power of their words." - Ilia, Goodreads
"Both eulogy and manifesto, Still in a Dream is an enthralling, nostalgic meditation on formative, lost-in-music moments and an eloquent, enduring argument for an art of bliss and bewilderment" - - Declan Long, ArtReview
"An insightful history, mixed with fond memoires of writing for Melody Maker, one of the weekly "inkies" in the UK's exuberantly opinionated music press" ― Financial Times, Best Books of the Summer
"What a fantastic book this is! It is, I think, the finest work by the best living music writer." - Martin Raybould, Goodreads
"An absolutely sublime lovesong to the era, could read over and over" - Jazmine, Goodreads
“Absolutely loved this one, it took me the whole summer to read it, i simply wanted to take my time and i wished this book would never end! it was so much fun to learn more about the alternative music scene, the artists and the writer himself. i can’t wait to read it again in a few years and fall in love with it again” - Floortje, Goodreads
"I feel like this amazing book was written for me, loved the music.... if you read one book on music this year, plus even if you don't know most bands you will definitely want to find to play after reading this" - StevieH, Twitter.
"A pleasure to read!" - Iggy Pop Barker, amazon.co.uk
"Despite being 464 pages, it breezed by... It might be the most brisk, easy read of any of his books, and I enjoyed it immensely" - Fast and Bulbous blog
"Surprised even myself by how much I enjoyed and devoured this book. Just loved it... Over 400 pages and I wished it was longer" - Robert, Goodreads
"I read this in two days flat: that's how much I enjoyed it.... It is more personal than his other books, but without being self-indulgent." - William, Goodreads
"A perfect accompaniment to Rip It Up and Start Again. Thank you Simon for bringing back so many memories" -- Bookends (Amazon.co.uk reviewer)
"I've never dropped everything so fast to read a book immediately after receiving my pre-order.... It met my sky-high expectations" - Richard Balmer (Goodreads)
"These years clearly have much fondness attached to them from him which makes this a joy to read." - Aaron Hodgetts (Goodreads)
"Reynolds is a great writer. Many visceral, haptic descriptions of music that made me immediately put the book down and look up whatever song he was waxing lyrical about.... A lot of this reads like an impassioned plea for the value of criticism " - Luke McCarthy (Goodreads)
"A very fun and approachable writer " - Ben Yaxley, Goodreads
"I have never gone to the bookstore and bought a book as fast in my life" - Jo, Goodreads
"Was incredible and Simon Reynolds definitely succeeded in his explicit aim of giving me a retroactive high through the rich history of rock with memorable chapters on shoegaze and dream pop... great great account of the reinvention of rock through Reynolds’s own meditations on his life and journey as a music journalist" - - Yağmur, Goodreads
"One of the finest music books of the year" - Jonathan Wright, Classic Pop
"Still in a Dream is at times dizzying non-fiction about the most wonderful and dreamy music that was created in the alternative rock era 30–40 years ago.... You also have to dig out old LPs, CDs, seven-inches and maxi singles, not least Youtube videos, to get this music straight into your veins again. Thus, a very inspiring book." - Audun Vinger, DNHelg
"Highly enjoyable blend of memoir, history, anthology. Reynolds never really fails."- Stagger Lee, Goodreads
"A brilliant, bittersweet chronicle of what happens when six-string romanticism finally hits its sonic end of the road and has nowhere left to go but pure noise."- Ilya Miller, Goodreads
"Reynold's prose is as sharp as ever, and his connections to the milieus and awkward network of slackers is heartfelt and never crosses over into sappy territory." - Maldini Damas, Goodreads
"Although with Energy Flash, Rip it up and Start Again, and Shock and Awe he's set impossibly high standards, this might be his masterpiece" - Ingram, Amazon.co.uk
"Simon Reynolds is the kind of music writer who makes you want to rush out and listen to a hundred bands you have either never heard of or heard of / meant to check out / never got round to.... Still in a Dream is as entertaining, informative and combative as a night out with your gig going buddies." - Bookmunch
"Simon Reynolds, you have outdone yourself"- James Marples, Instagram
"A masterwork" ― Neil Mason, Moonbuilding, Book of the Week
"Still in a Dream acts beautifully as a thorough, thoughtful examination of the many featured bands and their music, as an encapsulation of the societies in which they emerged, and as a memoir of the formative years of Reynolds' adult life" -- David Pollock ― Record Collector
"His writing is passionate. . . it's a thrill ride. If you weren't there, you'll wish you had been" - Uncut
"It’s an extraordinarily detailed work, nostalgia for a pre-Internet age. It will be of interest to anybody interested in the music of the period" - No More Workhorse
"A masterful cultural and social archaeology"- Richard Imrich, Fullmoon
"Pretty good" - Kieran Press-Reynolds, GQ
Italian translation from Minimum Fax - January 2027
Spanish translation from Caja Negra Editora - 2027
French translation from Audimat - 2028
HIGHLIGHTS FROM EARLIER COVERAGE
Interview for Rock N Roll Book Club Music Maps podcast
FURTHER READING + LISTENING + WATCHING
Still In A Dream Footnotes
Chapter by chapter footnotes + bonus material will start going up in February. In the mean time, check out these early posts - The Lost Epigraphs and Lodestar Quotations - and look out for an Auto-Interview in the next month or so.
Instagram.com/simonreynoldswriter/ for the latest news
Baker's Dozen on Reinvention of the Guitar at The Quietus - with a YouTube playlist to accompany
Still In A Dream YouTube playlist
