by Michael Bracewell
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by Julian Stallabrass
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Amazon.co.uk Review
You might be forgiven for thinking that Michael Bracewell's The Nineties: When Surface was Depth is a cultural commentary on the nineties and in part it is—-but only in part. This is a book of interviews, music and art reviews, snatches of Bracewell's literary writing, a retrospective of the last four decades of art, literature and music as well as a cultural commentary on the nineties.
In the nineties, everything was being touted in quick succession as "the new rock and roll". Everything, that is, from football (the great surge of public fervour for England's chances in Italia 90), to Opera, (Pavarotti brought to the high street) to comedy, (Vic and Bob, Harry Enfield, Frank Skinner, Newman and Baddiel selling out Wembley Arena). Then came the pronouncement that contemporary art was the new rock and roll before the emergence and international success of Oasis reminded us all that "rock and roll, actually, was the new rock and roll and always had been." Bracewell knows the music scene and he tells the story of Britpop with the authority and assurance of someone who has spent a lifetime collecting records, going to concerts and writing reviews for the music papers. He also appears to be equally at home with the Britart phenomenon as well as the literary scene past and present.
Some of the material used in the book has appeared elsewhere and consequently The Nineties is something of a patchwork—but none the worse for that. A good portion of the book is comprised of a series of fascinating interviews with and/or commentary upon more or less iconic figures from the 60s, 70s and 80s as well as the 90s; from The Pet Shop Boys to Patti Smith, from Alexander McQueen to Yoko Ono. The interviews and evaluations are truly first rate and alone they justify the price of the book. But this also works as cultural analysis and right from the get-go Bracewell identifies the key ideas that were to emerge from the culture during the nineties, such Irony and Authenticity with the explosion in popular factual programme-making the defining spirit of the nineties. Books such as this are potential banana skins but Bracewell pulls it off with aplomb. Splendidly written, hugely entertaining and intellectually engaging without being too pretentious.--Larry Brown
Review
'Michael Bracewell is nothing less than the poet-laureate of late-capitalism.' Jonathan Coe from the reviews for England is MIne: 'Surely the strangest and most beautiful book on pop music ever written' THE BIG ISSUE 'Bracewell's witty, free-ranging text links artistic visions of England from the Arcadian ideal of Chaucer and Elizabethan literature to the films, youth movements and pop lyrics of today. His prose crackles with dry insight... This is an audaciously ambitious book, yoking together the sublime and the ridiculous with admirable seriousness.' VOX 'Michael Bracewell is terrific [and] ENGLAND IS MINE will enter the bloodstream on its neat turns of phrase.' TIME OUT
This challenging cultural history of the decade of Britpop, Cool Britannia and the Millennium Dome is essential reading for anyone wanting or claiming to understand the zeitgeist. Bracewell's post-mortem presents the reader with figures, situations and voices not only from the Nineties themselves but from the years that created, shaped and styled them. He allows these one-time icons to bear their own witness, avoiding stereotypes but managing to pull from them a glimmering sense of the decade as a whole, rising as it does out of the 20th century. Equally mind-bending when read chapter by chapter or when flicked through at random, Bracewell's examples trace the minutiae and the byways of pop culture as well as the global trends. The demonization of Yoko Ono sits hand in hand with cafe latte sophisticates, the death of Diana with complementary therapies. Much of the book is written in the words of celebrities, participators, commentators, self-conscious self-constructors: in short, people who are doing Bracewell's work for him. By this means he shows how culture has become self-analysis, and self-analysis culture, via the trend for becoming what one appears to be. Whether you are a veteran of cultural analysis or fresh from living the book's subject, this heterogeneous collection of anecdote, argument and critique will fascinate, amuse and inform you. (Kirkus UK)
This challenging cultural history of the decade of Britpop, Cool Britannia and the Millennium Dome is essential reading for anyone wanting or claiming to understand the zeitgeist. Bracewell's post-mortem presents the reader with figures, situations and voices not only from the Nineties themselves but from the years that created, shaped and styled them. He allows these one-time icons to bear their own witness, avoiding stereotypes but managing to pull from them a glimmering sense of the decade as a whole, rising as it does out of the 20th century. Equally mind-bending when read chapter by chapter or when flicked through at random, Bracewell's examples trace the minutiae and the byways of pop culture as well as the global trends. The demonization of Yoko Ono sits hand in hand with cafe latte sophisticates, the death of Diana with complementary therapies. Much of the book is written in the words of celebrities, participators, commentators, self-conscious self-constructors: in short, people who are doing Bracewell's work for him. By this means he shows how culture has become self-analysis, and self-analysis culture, via the trend for becoming what one appears to be. Whether you are a veteran of cultural analysis or fresh from living the book's subject, this heterogeneous collection of anecdote, argument and critique will fascinate, amuse and inform you. (Kirkus UK)
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