So, why would you want to read a collection of short essays about a bunch of tracks you've mostly never heard of? There are several reasons. Firstly, Marcello Carlin has a way of writing about these tracks - a wildly eclectic selection, ranging from Dorothy Squires to Stockhausen via Britney Spears and Mott The Hoople - in a vividly descriptive way, that instantly has you reaching for YouTube or Spotify to check your reactions against his. Secondly, the range and depth of Carlin's knowledge is unparalleled in contemporary music writing; this is a man who has dedicated his life to the appreciation of music in all its forms. Thirdly, the intensity of Carlin's passion - he truly loves all these tracks, and he wants you to feel the same - lifts The Blue In The Air clear of any reference-book dullness.
And fourthly - and perhaps most crucially - this is a writer who is unafraid of framing his observations within a deeply personal context. As the preface makes clear, these essays were written during a crucial period of change in Carlin's personal life. Widowed several years earlier, with devastating consequences to his state of mind, music became his lifeline, and writing about music became his means of re-connecting with the world. After striking up correspondence with a reader of his pioneering music blog (The Church Of Me), his friendship converted to love, and love to marriage. While waiting for his second wife to join him in the UK from her native Canada, Carlin's formerly bleak worldview brightened, and his new-found sense of joyful redemption and optimism pervades the whole collection. Thus it doesn't take too much work to read between the lines of his text, re-casting it as an extended love letter, and a prayer for a better future. Music can serve no higher purpose, and Carlin's music writing - incisive, idiosyncratic, passionate, and bursting with life - is a glorious reflection of how art can serve life.
