An ecstatic and eccentric blend of criticism, music, autobiography and philosophy that is knowingly caught between genres ... As looping and leisurely as a satisfying jog in the park ... A peripatetic text that moves nimbly from one musician to another ... One of its primary virtues is that it introduces a reader largely ignorant of music (guilty as charged) to quite a lot of it ... Both a formal and a substantive meditation on the ways the personal and the impersonal intersect in the act of aesthetic evaluation, that is, the act of criticism.
Ruminative and vigorous ... Each [chapter] has the quality of a song, Ratliff contemplating with erudition and quiet ecstasy the work of a staggering range of contemporary and classical musicians ... At once highly pleasurable and scrupulously intelligent, a book to read closely.
Timely tonics for a pandemic’s alienation and for moments of social unrest ... Like a runner removing his jacket a mile or so in, he sheds the working critic’s posture ... Focusing on music though earphones while in motion, Mr. Ratliff gets out of his own head, which is something critics and even casual listeners would benefit from doing more often ... That sense of a deep middle—free from ideas about opening salvos or closing resolutions, free from concerns over form—are contained in his favorite music and, fleetingly but stirringly, in his book.
