A month ago, I bought a DVD player. Which, look, on so many levels, I can accept as a totally insane thing to buy in 2026.

For one thing, when I made the purchase I owned precisely zero DVDs - I’d more or less given away my fairly extensive collection for mere peanuts when we moved house eight years ago, and when the DVD player arrived, I owned nothing that I could put in it to watch. What I did own was a very fancy 4K Apple TV streaming box, which, through my subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Disney+, Mubi and NowTV meant I had, at my finger tips, many more thousands of films than I would ever be able to watch in the remainder of my life.

I did not need a DVD player.

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I bought it after a colleague from work told me how much better the picture quality on a UHD 4K Blu Ray was than from even the highest quality internet stream, which was enough to tickle my tech-nerd funny bone. My plan was to buy a fancy Blu Ray player, see if he was right, and then send it back if I couldn’t tell the difference.

But I didn’t send it back.

The reason I’ve kept it has very little to do with any of the techy benefits pertaining to the Ultra High Definition 4K resolution. Sure, my colleague wasn’t lying - the picture and sound quality on a 4K disc is pretty amazing, and a marked improvement on what I was getting from Netflix. But that first night, my wife and I watched the 2008 comedy Role Models starring Paul Rudd and that guy who, whatever else he does with his life, will always, always inescapably be Stifler - a film that, whatever its stand out qualities, its cinematography and sound design are not notably among them.

Role Models is not a great movie. It is not a bad movie by any means - it’s just not an essential contribution to the cinematic art form or human culture in general.

Even so, it was amazing.

Because something weird happened when we turned on the DVD player, popped the disc out of its horrible plastic ‘jewel’ case, inserted it into the machine and pressed play. We were suddenly taking part in a ritual - one we unknowingly had taken part in for many, many years, the magic of which we had either been ignorant of or had entirely taken for granted. This mundane ritual - of choosing a piece of physical media, putting it into a machine, and pressing play on a remote control - gave the whole experience a certain gravitas that meant we actually watched it.

Properly watched it.

Without also looking at our phones…

We watched films at home before the DVD player arrived all the time, of course we did. But it was very rare that I properly paid attention to these films for their whole duration. There might be a football match going on at the same time that I ‘needed’ to keep tabs on. I might get a text from a mate about something or other which ‘needed’ an immediate response. I might be expecting an email from my boss, and ‘need’ to keep an eye on my inbox. Or - most often - the brain-numbing pull of Reddit or Twitter or Instagram would become just too strong to resist…

But the experience of watching even as unspectacular a film as Role Models on DVD -without double screening - was a total delight. It was a reminder of what things were like before we were sold the promise of thousands and thousands and thousands of films, on demand, any time of day or night, without ever stopping to ask whether this endless choice was really a good thing.

Since Role Models, we’ve watched many more films on the DVD player, most of which take much more advantage of the technological advances of the UHD 4K Blu Ray experience, and which really deserved our attention as pieces of proper cinematic art - One Battle After Another; The Sting; The Big Lebowski; Sicario; Nosferatu etc etc. Each night, we’d decide what to watch, selecting a disc from my slowly growing collection, and foregoing the deathly scroll through Netflix’s home page in an effort to find something to entertain us.

We’re all familiar with that horrible digital dance - when you’re presented with literally millions of titles to choose from, sticking with the one you’ve chosen is really hard, because you know that the odds are there is something much more suited to your mood, if only you can find it…

In foregoing the dreaded twenty-minute back-and-forth through the virtual ‘shelves’ of whatever selection the algorithms served up, we instead made a very clear and deliberate decision about what we were watching. We had an infinitely smaller pool of films to choose from (although my horribly impecunious habits when it comes to buying physical media of any kind means my DVD/Blu Ray collection is growing by the day…), but our choice felt more decisive, more considered. Less, in this case, is definitely more.

The limits of choice, the friction of having to put the disc in the machine and press play - these all add to the ritual, the feeling that this is something special, worthy of our time, worthy, most crucially, of our attention.

And so when the film played, we gave it our attention. To start with, I’d put my phone in a bag or in another room entirely to limit the potential for temptation. But now I can sit with my phone next to me, knowing from experience that the pleasures of giving my full attention to a film - whether it be a masterpiece like Boogie Nights or a throwaway piece of entertainment like Role Models - is a far more enriching experience than staring at my phone.

It’s this same impetus that informed the design of the OneTrackMinds live show, why we insist on our storytellers staying on stage while their song plays - doing so helps build a ritual around the act of listening, and so even if their song is one that you’ve heard a thousand times before, it’s a genuinely different experience to listen to it deliberately, to give it your full attention.

And the more we do it, the more we strengthen our ability to focus on the things that deserve our attention. People like to say that our attention spans are shrinking - but that’s a choice, not a symptom. It doesn’t have to be this way, and we don’t have to accept that our cultural inputs have to cater to a way of thinking about the world that serves only the billionaire philistines who own these big ‘entertainment’ companies. We can strengthen our abilities to focus on the things that matter, and ignore the things that really really don’t…

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So then, here’s a list of five films that I reckon it’s more or less impossible to watch unless you’re giving them your full attention.

1. Perfect Days (2023)

   A completely charming Japanese-language film from Dutch auteur Wim Wenders, about the beautifully simple life of a janitor working for the extensive (and fancy!) public toilet network in Tokyo. I know that doesn’t sound appealing, but you’re going to have to trust me on this. It’s a wonderful celebration of the simple things in life, and the pleasures that come from paying attention to the beauty all around us. Plus, it’s in Japanese, so unless you’re fluent in that language, you’re not going to take much away from just listening to the dialogue while you scroll through Reddit…
   See Also: Parasite, Plein Soleil, Amelie.

2. All Is Lost (2013)

   A criminally underrated film from director J.C. Chandor starring Robert Redford in one of his final roles. And what a role it is - Redford is the only character in the film, which is set entirely on board a yacht in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. At the start of the film, the boat careens in to an abandoned shipping container and takes on a leak that, despite Redford’s best efforts, only gets worse and worse. There’s almost no dialogue in the film (one rare exception is when Redford let’s out the greatest utterance of the word ‘Fuck’ ever recorded on film), and so unless you’re paying attention to the action, you’re going to get nothing out of it. And that would be a real shame, as this is an absolute masterpiece in storytelling.

3. Flow (2024)

   Gints Zilbalodis’s surprise Oscar-winner is the sort of film that really gives hope for the future of cinema. Made on a tiny budget on his home computer, it’s a visually stunning and gloriously trippy saga about a black cat trying to survive in a flooded post-apocalyptic world, along with a capybara and a pack of dogs. There’s no point in trying to explain Flow - you simply have to watch it, and give in entirely to its charms. There’s no dialogue at all, so if you’re not watching it with your full attention, then you’re missing out.

4. Interstellar (2014)
   Look Interstellar is absolutely not Christopher Nolan’s best film - not by a long shot - but the sheer ambition on display deserves huge respect. It’s hugely obtuse and bloated, and the somewhat confusing plot is made all the harder to follow by the fact that everyone is always fucking whispering for some reason. But all the pleasures to be had from watching Interstellar (and there are many) would be entirely lost if you tried to do so while also looking at reels on TikTok at the same time…
   See also: Memento, 2001: A Space Odyssey

5. All The President’s Men (1976)
   Despite working in the film industry for 30 years and being the sort of person who self-identifies as a cinephile (god…), I hadn’t actually seen All The President’s Men until the end of March this year, a horrible oversight which I hope this newsletter will prevent happening to you. It’s a terrific thriller about the Watergate scandal and the two Washington Post journalists who worked to uncover it, but it’s also famously knotty and complex, the dialogue frustratingly full of key plot details and delivered in a rattle by Robert Redford (him again) and Dustin Hoffman without the slightest regard for whether or not you’re paying attention. So if you want to get the most out of the film, put your phone down and listen in. It’s worth it…

Give them a go, and let me know what you think. Any I’ve missed out? Let us know in the comments…

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Other things to share with you this week.

This is on topic - Three Steps To Fix Your Attention Span in The New York Times.

Is the UK falling out of love with social media? asks Dan Milmo in The Guardian. Here’s hoping…

Our friend (and two-time OneTrackMinds storyteller) Alicia McDonald’s debut feature film is released in cinemas a week on Friday. Finding Emily also stars our old friend Prasanna Puwanarajah, and it looks like a properly charming old-school romcom. Go and see it in the cinema while you can.

The New York Times released their list of the greatest American songwriters working today, resulting in a predictable social-media story of disagreement. Much more interesting than their list was this piece on the Objects That Inspire Great Songs.

Our Album of the Week is the newest record by strange New Zealand songstress Aldous Harding. I’m in Cannes at the moment for work, and every year I always reserve an album to listen to during the festival, as my soundtrack to my goings on. Past Cannes albums have included Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, Metronomy’s The English Riviera and Father John Misty’s Pure Comedy. But this year is the year of Train On The Island, and so far it’s shaping up very nicely indeed.

Oh, and don’t forget, this time next week it’s our 10th Anniversary show at Wilton’s Music Hall. We are officially sold out, but if you still want to come along, it’s worth popping in on the night in case of any returns.

Right, that’ll do! I’m in Cannes until Sunday night, so let’s be honest, the chances I get my act together in order to send a newsletter out on Monday next week are slim… but let’s never say never! Either way, I’m wishing you all the very best until next time…

KB.

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Anniversary Show - May 20th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here

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I’m very aware that yet another less-than-ideal period of time has passed since I last wrote to you. Lately, these newsletters have lacked the regularity I, for one, would prefer them to have, and I only have myself (and my paid-job workload) to blame. I apologise again, not for the first time this year, but I hope you won’t hold it against me. I hope you know it’s not indicative of any apathy on my part. I love you all, I truly do.

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Anyway… we’re now exactly two weeks away from our Tenth Anniversary show at Wilton's Music Hall, and as I predicted last time out, we are well and truly SOLD OUT. It’s a very unusual feeling to be so far off from a show night, and to feel like the biggest stress - selling tickets - is already taken care of. It’s unusual, as I say, but also very, very welcome, and long may it continue…

What’s more, we’ve also now got a full lineup of six storytellers! As it’s our birthday, we decided we wanted to include one of our Hidden Tracks guests to incorporate one of the most joyous parts of OTM’s ten year history, and to that end, we’ve enlisted the services of the very wonderful Morgan Chalmers to bring her triumphant storytelling skills from our recent Southbank Centre show to the Wilton’s Main Stage.

If you were in the audience at the Purcell Room back in March, you’ll no doubt be as excited as we are to hear Morgan reprise her brilliant jazz-inspired story. And if you weren’t there, then you’re most certainly in for a treat.

Morgan rounds off our six-guest lineup, all of whom have also already told us what song they’re going to be talking about, which means, two-weeks out from show night, we’re better prepared than we sometimes are 24-hours ahead of curtain up. As I say, it’s a very lovely feeling, and one I could certainly get used to…

It leaves Adam and me a most welcome amount of time to fully prep for the show, to hone our script, work on our jokes and… I realise I’m now piling on unreasonable amounts of pressure on the pair of us to deliver an entirely flawless performance on the night, which is probably unhelpful. Given that we’re both also telling stories on May 20th, we’ve still got a pretty hefty amount of work to be doing between now and then, so forget everything I told you about everything being in hand. We’ll doubtless find ourselves flying by the seats of our pants, as we usually do, and no harm will come of it.

All to say, I’m very excited indeed. Thank you to all of you who’ve bought tickets. And if any of you still want to come along, do drop the Wilton’s Box Office a line to join the waitlist - there’s every chance we’ll have a few tickets available on the night.

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Some other things to share with you this week:

Joe Dunthorne - one of our anniversary guests on May 20th - featured in The Guardian’s The Books Of My Life column.

Here’s a very interesting piece in Wired about how the success of last year’s most hyped band Geese might have been all a bit PR move… (One of these days I’m going to write more about the role that PR/press/marketing has on the way we enjoy/don’t enjoy certain acts. I think it’s a fascinating element in our experience of music).

I’m still on an Ambient Music fix at the moment, and got a lot of listening pleasure from this selection of 9 Albums That Will Transform A Space

Lobby Riot

9 Albums That Will Transform a Space

MEDIA ROOM is our series collecting the films, albums, and songs for the moment at hand—selections for the perfect evening tuned to set the vibe…

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3 months ago · 1439 likes · 45 comments · Lobby Riot

I’m going on a podcast later this week to talk about my favourite use of music in films. For research, I rewatched Ana Lily Amirpour’s gloriously weird 2014 vampire film A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night yesterday. If you’ve not seen it, remedy this immediately. Here’s a little teaser about what I’m going to be talking about on the pod…

Oh, and on Friday I’m going into BBC London to chat with our old friend Robert Elms about our upcoming anniversary show. I’m on around 10:30am if you want to listen in…

Our album of the week is the debut record from London-based folk/Americana act Tenderness, who we caught at the Shake The High Road festival in Leytonstone last weekend. It’s the latest incarnation of singer-songwriter Katy Beth Young of 2010s Folk duo Peggy Sue, and it’s gorgeous - fans of Big Thief, Yo La Tengo and Patsy Cline will most certainly dig this…

Right, that’ll do… I’m off to Cannes next week for work, but I hope I’ll have time to whip off a quick missive for you on Monday before I leave. Until then though,

KB.

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Anniversary Show - May 20th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here

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I trust you’re all very well. Apologies for the late delivery of this newsletter - I spent much of last week in bed, or, at the very least, in close proximity to a toilet. I must have picked something up on my travels over the Easter break, which made for a somewhat, let’s say uncomfortable, week. I’ll spare you the details perhaps. But on the plus side, I got the chance to catch up on some reading, which was most welcome. Silver linings all around.

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What’s more, if I’d written to you this time last week, I’d have had little in the way of news to share with you vis-a-vis our big Anniversary Show at Wilton's Music Hall on May 20th. But, over the course of last week, we were able to lock in two further guests for our birthday lineup, and I’m very excited to share them with you today.

First up, we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve managed to secure the storytelling services of none other than Graham McPherson! Graham is a former butcher’s assistant and painter/decorator from Hastings, and he’s someone we’ve been wanting to get on the show for absolutely ages.

‘Graham who?’, you might be asking. Never heard of him? Hardly a headline-name is he? You might justifiably be wondering why we’re so pumped to have him on the show at all, let alone headlining our anniversary gig.

But then you probably know him better by his stage name…

It’s bloody SUGGS!!! From Madness!!! The lead singer of one of the biggest selling pop bands in the UK. He’s a genuine, bona-fide musical legend! And he’s coming on our show on May 20th to tell a story about a song that changed his life! I can scarcely believe it.

And, as if that weren’t news enough, we’ll also be welcoming back our old friend Joe Dunthorne!

Joe is the best-selling author of the novels Submarine, Wild Abandon and The Adulterants as well as his most recent non-fiction book Children of Radium (previously recommended most strongly in this very newsletter). More importantly for our purposes, Joe was the very first guest on our second ever show on May 20th 2016, and we wanted to invite him back to tell a brand new story to celebrate our birthday. He’s already told me what he’s going to be talking about, and I’m obviously not going to tell you what it is, except to say his chosen song is a proper banger…

As you already know, we’re also welcoming back the very lovely Alice Vincent…

It’ll be Alice’s fourth time as a guest on the show, which is really rather lovely, and her appearance coincides with the paperback launch of her new book, Hark: How Women Listen, which is released on May 7th (and which you can buy from our bookshop!)

And, as also previously hinted at, seeing as it’s our party and we can tell a story ourselves if we want to, Adam and I are both going to take to the stage with another song-inspired tale each.

Given that nearly every time I’ve had to tell a story on the show in the past it’s been as a result of a guest pulling out at quite short notice, I’m both excited and somewhat daunted by the challenge of actually having a proper amount of time to prepare and shape my story for the anniversary show. Perhaps paradoxically, the last-minute nature of my preparation has always acted as a sort of buffer to nervousness. This time though, I’ve got weeks and weeks to get it right, to draft and redraft, practice, practice, practice… and far too many opportunities for nerves and anxieties to find their way into my set up. Still, you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth…

Anyway… Graham, Suggs, Joe, Alice, Shaky and Brodes - that makes five, which, as you know, is usually a full lineup. However, as it’s our anniversary, we’re reverting, for one night only, to our original six-person lineup, which means we’re still tracking down one final storyteller for you for this very special show. (It also means you’re getting 16.6% extra OneTrackMinds for your money if you’re coming on May 20th! Whoop whoop!). If all goes to plan, we’ll announce that final guest in next week’s newsletter…

As of sending this email, there are only 19 tickets left for our anniversary show. If you’ve not bagged your ticket yet, and you want to come and help us celebrate ten year of OneTrackMinds, then please don’t hang around. I’ll be very surprised if there are that many left by this time next week…

Book Tickets for May 20th

Some other things to share with you this week:

Huge congratulations to our very lovely friend and former OneTrackMinds storyteller Tom Edden, who took home an Olivier award on Sunday night for Best Actor In A Supporting Role in a Musical. Here’s a challenge: try and watch his acceptance speech without crying…

The marvellous Ed Blunt - singer-songwriter and choirmaster of our friends and collaborators Camden Voices - is about to embark on a massive nationwide tour in May. Ed is a bloody delight, and a fantastic musician. Definitely go and see him if you can. Tour dates here.

A book recommendation from my week in bed - George Saunders’ new novel Vigil, which was published back in February (and which Adam gifted to me, along with a ticket to see the great man in conversation with Richard Ayoade), and I finally got around to reading it during my convalescence. It’s a very quick read - less than 200 pages - and a deeply affecting and typically empathetic piece of writing. It’s very funny in parts, and it left me in tears by the end. It’s only out in hardback at the moment, which is a bit of a bummer, but I’d say more than worth the cost.

Talking of hardbacks, I enjoyed this piece from Tom Rowley at Backstory about why publishers persist with hardbacks despite no one really liking them…

My Bookshop Backstory by Tom Rowley

What's the point of hardbacks?

New events at Backstory…

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2 months ago · 108 likes · 84 comments · Tom Rowley

The Guardian put together a list of the 10 Soundtracks That Changed The Way We Listen To Movies.

Another enjoyable Substack read from Hannah Bay - An Analog Adventure (without buying more things)

midnight crumbs

an analog adventure (without buying more things)

if you’ve been a person on the internet lately, you’ve probably noticed the soft return to analog life. and i’ve been watching the movement unfold with a mix of affection and recognition, because i understand the impulse so deeply, i wrote about it elsewhere…

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4 months ago · 417 likes · 60 comments · hannah bay

Right, that’ll do… We’re hoping to be able to announce a couple of our Anniverary Storytellers later this week, so watch this space… Otherwise we’ll be back on Monday with more from OneTrackMinds HQ…

KB.

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Anniversary Show - May 20th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here

Listen to Our Podcast | Substack | Apple Podcasts | Spotify

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I trust you’re all very well. I’m getting back up to speed after a very welcome long weekend celebrating my birthday AND my wedding anniversary. A good tip for any aspiring husbands/wives out there - if you get married on your birthday, you’ll never forget your anniversary. It’s worked out well for me these past eleven (ELEVEN!) years.

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To celebrate, on Friday I took myself off to the cinema (to see Project Hail Mary, which was… fine), had a much-needed massage, and then Zoe and I went for dinner at Lima in Shoreditch, which I urge you to steer well-clear of, unless you enjoy overpaying for fairly mediocre Peruvian food, served in a charmless dining room by staff who really, really couldn’t give a shit if you’re having a nice time or not.

Nevertheless, we refused to let it spoil our weekend, and the birthday celebrations seemed to continue into this morning when I received our weekly ticket report from Wilton's Music Hall which contained the news that we’ve already sold a staggering 300 tickets for our Tenth Anniversary Show in May. We’ve not even announced our lineup yet guys! It’s ridiculous!

And it’s wonderful news - unless, of course, you’ve yet to book your tickets, in which case it’s much more of an urgent alarm call to get your act together, or risk missing out on our celebrations. As of writing, there are around thirty tickets left, but who knows how much longer they’ll be available, especially as we’re expecting to announce an absolutely stellar lineup in the coming weeks. Don’t delay…

Tickets for May 20th

It’s nearly the end of March, so I thought we’d dedicate the rest of this week’s newsletter to a smattering of links and recommendations of various bits and pieces we’ve been enjoying over the course of the month.

For instance, this very lovely piece from the team at Monocle, featuring a beautifully photographed guide to some of London’s finest bookshops including one of my favourites, Liberia in Shoreditch.

While we’re on the subject of bookshops, I enjoyed this essay from Substacker Petya K. Grady. Her substack A Reading Life is great, and this piece about how to interact with bookshops when you have the same sort of book-buying compulsion I have, was enjoyable relatable…

A reading life

How I move through bookstores

For my birthday last month, my husband and my daughter surprised me with a trip to New Orleans. It’s one of my most favorite cities in the world and a place we visit whenever we can. At this point we know our way around it well enough that it’s a low-effort, high-return kind of destination. We walk around to soak in the atmosphere, we eat extremely well because the food scene is incredible (my vegan husband fully agrees), and we visit bookstores…

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3 months ago · 218 likes · 87 comments

Hat tip to Adam, who told me to listen to this - a podcast from BBC Sounds all about How Reading Made Us from writer and broadcaster James Marriott. It’s an impassioned plea to put away our phones and get back to partaking in a pastime that is genuinely good for you. Persuasive stuff.

And if you’re inspired to pick up a book after listening to How Reading MadeUs, you could do worse than seeking out a copy of The Passenger Seat by Vijay Khurana, which is honestly one of the best things I’ve read in ages. It’s a short, tight thriller about a pair of young men (or are they boys?) who decide to go on a road trip together into the wilderness and… I don’t want to tell you any more for fear of taking away any of the book’s genuinely frightening impact. It’s a remarkable piece of writing, and stayed with me for days and days afterwards. Strong strong strong recommend…

(Oh, and it’s made it through to the semi-finals of The Tournament Of Books, which I mentioned in a previous newsletter, and which is getting very exciting indeed…)

This Substack essay from writer Gretchen Schrim chimed very much with one of the exercises we did at our Hidden Tracks workshop at the Southbank Centre the other weekend - putting images into your writing. Especially important when you’re telling stories orally, we’ve learnt…

Craft Work

Writing images

At some point last year, I was told by another writer about the advice Claire Keegan gave to students in her writing workshop. She said that writing fiction well involves writing pictures. During their workshops with Keegan when reading a participant’s work they were told to call out when they encountered a written picture. The logic went, if you’re not…

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3 months ago · 75 likes · Craft Work

Here’s a fascinating piece in The Guardian which I’ve been meaning to share with you for weeks now, but keep forgetting… It’s about William Basinski’s ambient classic record The Disintegration Loops, and you can thank me afterwards for introducing you to a genuinely amazing piece of music…

Our Album of the Week is the new(ish) one from Mitski, which I very gratefully received as a birthday present from my lovely wife, and which has been on the record player since Friday morning. Nothing’s About To Happen To You is bloody marvellous. Enjoy…

Right, that’ll do… We’re hoping to be able to announce a couple of our Anniverary Storytellers later this week, so watch this space… Otherwise we’ll be back on Monday with more from OneTrackMinds HQ…

KB.

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Anniversary Show - May 20th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here

Listen to Our Podcast | Substack | Apple Podcasts | Spotify

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Welcome, welcome - I trust you’re all very well. In particular, an extra special welcome to all the many new friends we’ve picked up as new subscribers in the last week or so. How are you all doing?

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Well that was fun wasn’t it? What a week we had at OneTrackMinds HQ. First off, nothing short of a triumphant return to our old home at Wilton's Music Hall last Tuesday for a sold out show, featuring five of the best stories we’ve ever heard on the show. Alicia MacDonald kicked things off with a very funny story about a not-quite-formalised first romance, and the subsequent yearning/mourning soundtracked by (who else?) Celine Dion. Novelist Michel Faber talked about overcoming a bias against genres of music that are deemed uncool - Christian-themed country music in particular - and the rewards that could be found when doing so.

(Michel also revealed a bit of personal history relating to Wilton’s Music Hall - apparently the balcony at Wilton’s was transformed into a Victorian pub for the filming of the BBC adaptation of his excellent novel The Crimson Petal and The White. How about that?!)

We like to say that a good OneTrackMinds show is one that makes you laugh, makes you cry and makes you get up and dance. Well our third guest last Tuesday, comedian Pauline Eyre, delivered all three in one story, while also paying homage to the woman who inspired her to get into stand up in the first place, Shappi Khorsandi, who happened to be our final guest of the night, and whose Leonard Cohen-themed paean for the good old days of late nights down the pub, wrapped up our evening in the most perfect way. Sandwiched between them was writer, podcaster and Maccabees guitarist Felix White, whose story in praise of the magical mystical powers of Nick Drake was as gorgeously written as his terrific books.

All in all, it was a delight. Huge thanks to all our guests - in particular to Pauline and Alicia who stepped in at very late notice to replace Tom McRae and Katherine May who, no doubt, we’ll get back on the show at some point later this year.

Here’s our lovely crew backstage after the show:

And here, for reasons I’m still not entirely clear about, is a picture of Felix White with a hare, taken by Michel Faber:

And here’s a link to a playlist of our guest’s songs from the night:

After Tuesday’s triumph, we had a couple of days to gear up for our return to the Southbank Centre on Saturday for our first Hidden Tracks show in quite some time - a jazz-themed night of storytelling as part of the Montreux Jazz Festival’s residency. Hidden Tracks is always such a rewarding part of what we do, because we go on such a journey with our storytellers, many of whom have never told a story on stage in public before.

And boy, did they deliver! Lots of laughter, lots of tears and a barnstorming finale from Morgan Chalmers who delivered the OneTrackMinds Holy Grail trick of performing her chosen song live on the night. It was electric, and capped off a truly gorgeous evening. Here’s the team backstage:

Big thanks to Ahnansé, the creative genius behind the wonderful weekly Afro-Funk live improvised event Steam Down, who kicked things off for us in the most wonderful way. And of course to our wonderful friend Deborah Bankole from the Southbank Centre for working tirelessly and joyfully to make the whole process such a success.

Here’s a playlist of the songs from Saturday night:

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Now - with the briefest pause to catch our breath (and catch up on all the things we neglected while in show mode last week…) - we turn our minds to our next show on May 20th. And what a show it’s going to be - our Tenth Anniversary spectacular, returning to the place where it all started exactly ten years (to the day!) since our first ever show.

To make it extra special, for one night only, we’re going to return to our original six-guest format - three stories before the interval, three after - making your ticket 20% better value for money! (I’m not sure I’ve got the maths correct there. But you know what I mean…).

We’ve already announced our first storyteller - our old friend, journalist and author Alice Vincent. In addition, it only feels right that Adam and I get a chance to join the party with a story each of our own. So that’s three out of six guests taken care of right away. Rest assured we’ve got some very exciting targets for those last three guests… Watch this space…

Astonishingly, there are already fewer than 70 tickets available, which, when I think about our struggles to shift tickets over the past couple of years, is absolutely wild. If you don’t want to miss out, then you’d better get your act together, and sharpish…

Tickets for May 20th

Some other things to share with you this week…

Another playlist for you - this time from the Write Your Story Workshop we delivered at the Royal Festival Hall’s Clore Ballroom on Sunday morning. We got our workshop participants to listen to each of these tracks in turn, and write down how the music made them feel, who the tracks reminded them of, a time the music brought them into, and a place the tracks transported them to. Feel free to have a go yourself should you feel so moved…

And while we’re writing about writing, here’s some wonderful writing advice from London Writer’s Salon’s founder Matt Trinetti on Substack:

SEEKING with Matt Trinetti

This is how you write (Part 2)

Nine thousand years ago, I wrote a piece This is how you write…

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3 months ago · 104 likes · 8 comments · Matt Trinetti

Does reading fiction make us better people? Of course it does!

A book recommendation for you: I came across Swedish journalist Andrev Walden’s novel Bloody Awful In Different Ways because of a quote on the cover which called Walden ‘the new Knausgaard’. Long-time readers of this newsletter will know that is precisely the right thing to put on a book’s cover if you want me to buy it. Bloody Awful is a very funny, painfully honest coming-of-age sort-of-novel based on Walden’s own childhood being raised by seven different ‘fathers’ over the course of seven years. Genuinely, one for the ages. I loved this.

Morrissey has cancelled a show in Valencia because the city’s too noisy for his sensitive little ears. What a bell end. How the mighty have fallen, hey?

Our album of the week comes from former Hot Chip vocalist Alexis Taylor - Paris In The Spring was released on Friday, and it’s very lovely indeed. I’ve been playing it at breakfast every morning since then, and the perfect soundtrack as the spring begins to show itself…

Right, that’ll do… We’ll be back next week. Until then,

KB.

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Anniversary Show - May 20th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here

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Crikey, blimey… it’s a busy day here at OneTrackMinds HQ. I was in Glasgow for much of last week (I managed to make it out just in time, before a vape shop near as well destroyed the Central train station on Sunday…), and I’m still getting back up to speed from that trip, so I am somewhat frantically coming to terms with the fact that it’s a Show Week.

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Not only are we presiding over a triumphant return to our loving home of Wilton's Music Hall tomorrow night (with a bona fide 100% Sold Out crowd no less!), but we’re also getting our act together for our first Hidden Tracks show in absolutely ages, which is happening at the Southbank Centre’s Purcell Room on Saturday evening.

It’s hectic, sure - but it’s bloody exciting!

Returning to Wilton’s after nearly two years away feels like a proper treat - and to be able to do so with an absolutely jam-packed crowd in tow feels like the cherry on the icing on the cake. Because nothing is ever straightforward, two of our original line-up have had to pull out (for drastically different reasons!), but not even this enforced very last-minute change in personnel is enough to derail my excitement. Tom McRae and Katherine May have had to duck out - albeit temporarily, as we’ll surely get them on the show again before too long - but we’ve already found two absolutely kick-ass replacements in former OneTrackMinds favourites Pauline Eyre and Alicia MacDonald.

Adam and I spent this morning listening to their chosen tracks, and there are some absolute belters in there, from some incredible artists who, somehow, have never been the subject of OneTrackMinds stories before now. Look, I don’t want to bang on about it if you haven’t got a ticket, because (have I mentioned this?) we are officially sold out… but if you do want to come along tomorrow, why not chance your arm and pop along to Wilton’s in case there are some no-shows?

Oh, that reminds me - tomorrow’s show starts at 7pm, which is half an hour earlier than normal. If you’re coming along, make sure you get there on time, or it’s going to get really awkward really fast…

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If you can’t make tomorrow night, but you’re itching to hear some wonderful stories about life-changing songs, then you can still book tickets for our Hidden Tracks show on Saturday night. We’ve selected our final five storytellers from our cohort of writers who’ve been taking part in our workshops since the end of January, and as always with our Hidden Tracks projects, it has been nothing short of amazing to witness these wonderful people find their stories, shape them and get ready to perform them on stage in front of an audience for the very first time. Our Hidden Tracks show is part of the Montreux Jazz Festival’s residency at the Southbank Centre, so all the tracks our storytellers will be talking about are jazz, or jazz-adjacent. As usual, the stories are a mix of laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreakingly moving, and every single one of them will connect with you in the most powerful way imaginable. It’s going to be great.

And, as if that’s not enough, we’ve also got a very special guest storyteller on the night to kick off proceedings - the multi-instrumentalist, composer, conductor and founder of legendary British Afro-Punk collective Steam Down, Ahnansé..

The show kicks off at 7:45pm, and tickets are available now. Don’t miss out!

Tickets for Hidden Tracks

Then - because there’s no rest when you’re this wicked - at 12pm on Sunday, Adam and I are running a live, free, public Hidden Tracks Workshop at the Clore Ballroom on the ground floor of the Royal Festival Hall. It’s 100% free, and 100% open to anyone and everyone who wants to try their hand at storytelling. There’s more information here - but no need to book, just turn up and have some fun.

Write Your Story

Some non-OneTrackMinds live-show-related things to share with you this week…

Last Thursday was World Book Day and, to celebrate, The Guardian’s music team shared stories about the bands and artists that helped them to discover literature - I owe Iron Maiden my English A-Level…

I’ve a funny feeling I might have posted to this link before but it’s important so… How To Discover New Music In An Age Of AI…

Related: In a frenetic digital era, he’s helping Angelenos rediscover the classic cassette player…

Also related: Why your cassette tapes sound terrible:

This is from a few weeks back now, but it made me cry with laughter, so… how lyrics written by a three-year-old became tear-inducing viral hits…

I’ve not found time to watch this yet, but I’m very much looking forward to doing so - master documentary filmmaker Morgan Neville’s deep-dive in to the post-Beatles career of Paul McCartney - Man On The Run. It’s on Amazon Prime now.

On the way back from Glasgow, I devoured a cracking new novel called Beartooth, by American writer Callan Wink. I was drawn to it by the gorgeous cover design, further persuaded by the terrific reviews from the likes of Junot Diaz, Kevin Powers and Colin Walsh, and then ultimately sold by the author biography on the rear cover flap, which concludes ‘He lives in Livingston, Montana where he is a fly fishing guide on the Yellowstone River.’ Strong strong recommend!

Talking of Books, the greatest book competition in the world kicked off last Friday - The 2026 Tournament Of Books - in which 18 of the best books of the last year ‘compete’ in a knock-out tournament, with one match each week day in March, until only one remains… The winning author’s prize is a live rooster. Previous winners include Cloud Atlas, Wolf Hall, Normal People, The Road and The Underground Railroad. Follow along!

Our album of the week honours the (slightly late) 20th anniversary of Andrew Bird’s The Mysterious Production Of Eggs - and if you’re unfamiliar with the work of Mr. Bird (one of my honest-to-goodness downright favourite Holy Grail Desert Island artists), then you are in for a treat…

Listen on Apple Music. Listen on Spotify.

Right, that’ll do… I hope we’ll see you at one of our shows this week - if not, we’ll be back on Monday with a full rundown of everything that happened. Until then,

KB.

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Anniversary Show - May 20th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here

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I trust you’re all very well. Apologies for the delay to the usual programming - this newsletter is supposed to go out on a Monday (although that has always been somewhat erratically abided by…), but this week I was deliberately holding off, waiting in hope for a special something to happen...

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Since last Thursday, our show at Wilton's Music Hall on March 10th has been very, very, very, very nearly sold out. Of the 389 tickets available for purchase, there’s been just one last ticket remaining. For days the seat map on Wilton’s ticket site was stuck looking like this…

That one little red blob towards the top left hand corner represented our one final ticket, remaining unsold.

And it’s a good ticket too! Up on the balcony, on one of the tall stools, guaranteeing an unimpeded view of the stage, but, given that it’s at a slight angle to the action, discounted to a mere £10 (or £7.50 with a concession). It’s in the middle of a row, sandwiched happily between two pairs of tickets, presumably already purchased by two hip and groovy couples who would doubtless improve the whole experience for the lucky ticket holder.

So, I was convinced that, come Monday, that little fella would be gone too, and I’d be able to dedicate this week’s newsletter to the rather glorious news that our March 10th show was officially sold out.

But then Monday came and went, and that little guy was still there. Still hanging on.

Tuesday blew by, and still no takers.

Last week I caught up with all our storytellers for March 10th, and all five of them confirmed that they’re going to take up the offer of their two free tickets that we set aside for our storytellers. So this last unsold ticket, this little red guy, is literally the last remaining opportunity for anyone who wants to see Felix White from The Maccabees, novelist Michel Faber, author Katherine May, comedian Shaparak Khorsandi and singer-songwriter Tom McRae tell their stories about the songs that changed their life.

But still, there he was. Stuck on the shelf. No takers…

This morning, though, I figured I could wait no more. It’s been ten days since the last newsletter and if I let another day go by without writing to you guys, I’ll just look lazy and incompetent. I needed to get something out whether we were sold out or not.

So I logged in to Substack, fired up the new post editor, and, just as I was starting to pen this missive, I allowed myself one last look at the Wilton’s website.

And what did I find?

That’s right! Our show on March 10th at Wilton’s Music Hall is OFFICIALLY SOLD OUT!!! All 389 tickets! It’s a bloomin’ miracle! And it means that March 10th is officially going to be our biggest show ever. I can hardly believe it.

Now, almost immediately after making this discovery, I started hearing despicable accusations from the most cynical corners of the internet suggesting foul play was afoot. “How convenient!”, these nay-sayers nay-said, “Kristian wanted a hook to hang today’s overdue newsletter on, and it just so happened that that last stubborn ticket was sold just in time for him to do so”.

Frankly, I am appalled. The suggestion, that I would stoop so low as to buy that final ticket myself, just so that I could say that we’re sold out, is utterly ridiculous. I would like to hereby refute those nasty cynical rumours with the utmost vehemence, and to entirely deny any such claims.

In unrelated news, if you’re a solo traveller and you still want to come to our show on March 10th but for whatever reason never quite got around to buying your ticket, I just so happen to have gotten my hands on one last ticket (up on the balcony, on one of the tall stools, guaranteeing an unimpeded view of the stage, sandwiched between two hip and groovy couples who will surely go on to become your newest and bestest friends). If you’re interested in it, I will give it away - for free - to one lucky newsletter subscriber, along with a token for a free drink at the Mahogany Bar at Wilton’s Music Hall. To be eligible, all you have to do is either a) SHARE this newsletter post via email, social media or substack or b) Leave a Comment at the bottom of this post telling us why you want to come along on March 10th. I’ll pick a winner before next week’s newsletter…

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Now that our March show is officially sold out, we’re putting all our energies behind repeating the task for our Tenth Anniversary Show on May 20th. We’re still in the process of locking down our stellar lineup of storytellers to join author Alice Vincent in our six strong cohort of guests. But tickets are already selling fast, so you know what to do…

Tickets for May 20th

Before then, we’ve also got our first Hidden Tracks show for a while - featuring five brand new storytellers and one very special guest - which is happening at the Southbank Centre on Saturday March 14th as part of the Montreux Jazz Festival Residency. Tickets are on sale now…

Tickets for Hidden Tracks - March 14th

Some other things that are orbiting the OneTrackMinds multiverse to share with you all…

Congratulations to our friend Jessie Buckley on winning the BAFTA for Best Actress on Sunday night. She’s now - I think - the first and only former OneTrackMinds storyteller with a Film BAFTA to her name. If you’ve not seen her award-winning performance in Hamnet yet, then stock up on tissues and get yourself along to the cinema post-haste…

Over the weekend, I finished reading our March guest Felix White’s excellent new book Whatever Will Be Will Be. The marketing blurb will tell you that it’s a book about football, but it’s far far more than that - in fact, it’s a superbly written, incredibly vulnerable distillation of early mid-life angst and anxiety, and it made me cry a couple of times. Highly recommended, even if the idea of reading a ‘football book’ is somewhat anathema to you…

I was in Berlin last week for the Berlin Film Festival, which was a treat. Unusually for me, I actually managed to watch a few films while I was there, the pick of which was UK director Grant Gee’s brilliant Jazz-biopic Everybody Digs Bill Evans. I don’t think there’s a UK release date as yet, so me telling you this is somewhat redundant, but in the meantime read this excellent review in The Guardian, and make a note to watch it when it does eventually come out…

Also while in Berlin, I listened aplenty to Beck’s new covers compilation Everybody’s Gotta Learn Sometimes, which was released to coincide with Valentine’s Day, and consequently features a great selection of classic love songs, including one of my favourites Can’t Help Falling In Love, made famous by Elvis (and, to a much lesser extent, UB40…). While listening to it again over the weekend, I made a staggering discovery - while the songwriting is credited to Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore and George David Weiss, the melody is lifted wholesale from an 18th Century French Love Song called Plaisir D’Amour. I had no idea! Here’s Joan Baez’s version for your listening pleasure…

Right, that’ll do! Thanks for your patience and indulgence as always. We’ll be back next week with more news from OneTrackMinds HQ. Until then…

KB.

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Anniversary Show - May 20th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here

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I’m feeling very old this morning.

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Partly this is down to the fact that I’ve woken up with a stiff neck, a sore back and an ache in my left foot, and the fact that my knee creaks when I bend over to put on my socks.

But partly it’s because I’ve just unearthed this picture of me taken nearly ten years ago…

Look at that fresh faced young fellow, hey? I’m dressed like I’m attending try-outs for a Westlife tribute act!

In fact, I was dressed up all smart and fancy-like because this was the occasion of our first ever OneTrackMinds show at Wilton’s Music Hall on 19th May 2016, featuring our first ever lineup of Jemima Foxtrot, Pete Brown, Robert Bound, Jonathan Margolis, Christian Lee, and Helen Zaltzman.

I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

And I certainly had absolutely no idea that I’d still be doing it ten years later.

Since that first show, we’ve had over four hundred storytellers grace the OneTrackMinds stage at Wilton’s (and elsewhere), to share their stories of the songs that have changed their life. We published a book. We put out a podcast. And we’ve had a hell of a lot of fun doing it.

So I’m absolutely delighted to tell you about a very special show we’ve got planned to celebrate our anniversary. On May 20th - ten years and one day since our very first gig - we’re returning to Wilton’s Music Hall for a Big Tenth Anniversary Show.

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For one night only, we’re returning to our old six-guest format, and we’ll be featuring a line-up of some of our favourite former guests, as well as some big name special guests to mark the occasion.

We’re still pulling together our lineup, but I’m thrilled to announce that our lovely friend Alice Vincent will be joining us again to tell another story about a song that changed her life. We’ll announce more names over the coming weeks, but the only thing you need to know now is - TICKETS ARE ON SALE. Don’t Miss Out.

Tickets for 20th May - Anniversary Show

Before then of course, there’s the small matter of our March 10th show, which, as of writing has but FOUR tickets remaining to be sold. If you want to be there to see Felix White, Tom McRae, Michel Faber and Katherine May share their stories about their life-changing songs, then you’d better get a move on…

Tickets for March 10th

… and, a few days after that, we’re returning to the Southbank Centre for our latest Hidden Tracks show as part of the Montreux Jazz Festival’s Residency. We’ve selected our cohort of storytellers, who’ll be undergoing a series of workshops (starting tonight!) to help them find their stories, shape them and then perform them in front of a baying crowd of enthusiastic fans at the Purcell Room on Saturday March 14th.

Tickets For Hidden Tracks - March 14th

Then, on the following day, we’ll be hosting a live storytelling workshop in the Clore Ballroom at the Royal Festival Hall, which should be a whole lot of fun. It kicks off at 12pm on Sunday March 15th, and it’s completely free. Bring your friends, bring your family. We’ll have a blast.

Book for Write Your Story

So we’ve got quite a busy few weeks coming up, hey? Hope you can join us…

Some other things to share with you this week…

Here’s an incredible story from the BBC World Service - how I escaped a sect to become a chart-topping pianist.

Music Writer Dusty Henry on why he writes about music.

Another Thought

Why Write About Music?

I’m going on multiple decades of people telling me that going into music journalism is a bad idea…

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5 months ago · 98 likes · 20 comments · Dusty Henry

Look, I’m keen to avoid a full on segue into the sorry state of American politics at the moment, but I did enjoy this piece in McSweeney’s which acts as a reminder that it’s not going to last forever - When It Happens.

Read about filmmaker Ben Wheatley’s secret second life as a musician.

Ted Gioia’s favourite music for meditation in The Honest Broker…

The Honest Broker

My Favorite Music for Meditation

I’ve recently made changes to my daily regimen—these include more exercise, less sugar and carbs, and other building blocks toward serenity and physical health. But the biggest change has been daily meditation…

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4 months ago · 185 likes · 84 comments · Ted Gioia

Our Album of the Week comes c/o my Dreamhouse Records vinyl subscription, which served up this delightful slice of upbeat synth pop from cult Swedish musician Molly Nilsson. Enjoy!

Right that’ll do! I’m off to Berlin tomorrow for a few days, so take this as good warning that next week’s newsletter will almost certainly be delayed, and just as certainly filled with an array of Berlin-related nuggets for your enjoyment. Until then…

KB.

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Anniversary Show - May 20th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here

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I trust you’re all very well and that you’re in the right frame of mind to greet the arrival of February with open arms, despite the cold and the rain, the rain and the cold… the rain… the endless rain…

Anyway…

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We’re coming up to six weeks until our next live show - our first at Wilton's Music Hall in nearly two years - and to our absolute astonishment, we’re very nearly SOLD OUT. As of writing, there are only twenty-one tickets available for March 10th, which is, quite frankly, ridiculous. We’ve spent absolutely no money on marketing, and haven’t done too much to bother the algorithms on Instagram or TikTok, so we are bemused, bewildered and utterly bloody delighted that we’re looking at a sold out show for the first time in ages. Thank you to everyone who’s already bought a ticket. And if you haven’t done so already, let this be a five-alarm reminder to get a bloody move on, or you’ll almost certainly miss out on the chance of seeing Felix White, Michel Faber, Shaparak Khorsandi, Tom McRae and Katherine May share their stories about the songs that changed their lives. It’s going to be great. I can hardly wait…

Tickets for March 10th

If you do miss out - or if you’ve already got plans on that Tuesday - we’ve got another show later that week (on Saturday March 14th) in the form of our return to the Purcell Room at the Southbank Centre for our spin-off Hidden Tracks show. This will be our third visit to the Southbank Centre, but our first in conjunction with the residency of the world-renowned Montreux Jazz Festival. We started the process last Sunday with our first cohort of volunteer storytellers, and over the next six weeks, we’ll be working with them to help them find, shape and hone their stories about the jazz tracks that changed their life. If our previous two adventures with the brilliant team at the Southbank Centre are anything to go by, it’s going to be a lot of fun and another fantastic show. You can get your tickets now!

Tickets for Hidden Tracks - March 14th

For our Hidden Tracks workshops, I put together a little (actually, quite a large) playlist of various jazz (and jazz-adjacent) tracks as part of the exercises we’ve been doing with our participants. Here it is, in case you’re curious:

While we’re on the subject of jazz, we’re coming up to the centenary of the birth of arguably the greatest jazz musician of all time, Miles Davis. This piece in The Guardian celebrates his amazing legacy…

And, in another effortless segue, while we’re on the subject of legendary musicians with anniversaries, the tenth anniversary of the death of David Bowie has seen a mini-avalanche of Bowie-related books. Our pick of the bunch, comes from our friend and OneTrackMinds storyteller Paul Morley, whose new Bowie book Far Above The World is published in hardback this week.

And (segue #3…) while we’re on the subject of superlative books about pop music legends, I finally got around to picking up a copy of Ian Leslie’s book John and Paul: A Love Story In Songs. I’m six chapters in, and already can understand why Dylan Jones called it ‘a masterpiece’.

A swift obligatory reminder that you can buy copies of both these books (and many many more) from the OneTrackMinds Bookshop, and we’ll get a handsome little commission when you do.

Shop at the OneTrackMinds Bookshop

Despite the best efforts of OneTrackMinds storytellers Andy Miller and Adam Meggido, I’ve never quite understood the appeal of Stephen Sondheim… Maybe this piece in the New York Times, will help… 5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Sondheim.

Another enjoyable piece in The Guardian - How Aphex Twin overtook Taylor Swift to become the soundtrack to Gen-Z Life Online.

In an idle moment waiting for plane home from Gothenburg last week, I stumbled upon a terrific YouTube channel called Trash Theory, which serves up excellent little music documentaries on subjects as varied as how Weezer made the Blue Album, the weirdest number 1 singles of the 1990s, and, my personal favourite, this exploration into the brief existence of the subgenre of indie-rock known as Stomp Clap Hey.

Also while in Gothenburg, I wandered into a terrific little record store called (somewhat discordantly) Peckham Soul, where I spent an unreasonable amount of money on records that I couldn’t really fit in my carry-on luggage, but which I couldn’t bear leaving behind. And it’s from this mini haul of vinyl that I’ve selected our album of the week - strictly speaking, it’s an EP, but at 43 minutes long, this little gem from electronic dub/grime/ambient artist Burial is still a sizeable treat. Like his landmark album Untrue, Antidawn is a dark, eerie, somewhat unsettling piece of electronica, and just perfect for these cold, rainy evenings…

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Right, that’ll do. We’ll be back on Monday with more news from OneTrackMinds HQ.

KB.

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Next Show - March 10th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here

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We’ve nearly made it through January! Blue Monday - the most depressing day of the year - is behind us! And yet… and yet… the winter feels very much upon us. On top of us even, if today’s leaden-grey blanket of drab cloud is anything to go by.

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Despite my Scandinavian roots, I have struggled with winter for much of my life. I used to get very depressed around this time of year. January always felt like a horrible slap in the face after all the traditions of Christmas and all the comforting known knowns that it brings. The start of the year always felt like this vast expanse of unknown unknowns, a dark and gloomy expanse of uncertainty.

It was only recently that I started leaning in to Winter a bit more, recognising the unique pleasures that come with accepting the cold and the dark. Lighting some candles at night. Getting cosy under a blanket. Taking the time required to cook a stew in the slow cooker.

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I credit a great deal of this more mature and wise approach to winter to reading a genuinely fascinating book - Wintering by Katherine May.

It’s a gorgeous little book, exploring the season month to month, acknowledging the struggles it can bring, and yet suggesting ways to cope with and even flourish against some of Winter’s harshest elements. One example - this book introduced me to the concept of Second Sleep, and the idea that, historically, our pre-technological ancestors would often wake up during the middle of the night for an hour or two perhaps, before falling back to sleep again. I suddenly had a very sensible biological explanation for my winter insomnia, and I no longer stress about it to the same degree.

So I’m absolutely delighted to tell you that our fifth and final guest for our March 10th lineup at Wilton’s Music Hall is the author of Wintering, Katherine May.

Katherine is a writer, podcaster and speaker, whose work touches on nature, spirituality, slow-living and neurodivergence. Her books - which also include Enchantment and her memoir The Electricity of Every Living Thing - have all been best-sellers in the UK, the US and all over the world. She’s the host of the wonderful podcast How We Live Now, and also writes a beautiful Substack newsletter called The Clearing, which she describes as a community for wild-minds, winterers and enchantment-seekers. We are absolutely delighted to have her as a guest on the show in March, and cannot wait to hear her story about a song that changed her life.

Katherine completes our lineup, joining comedian and writer Shaparak Khorsandi, novelist Michel Faber, Maccabees frontman Felix White, and singer-songwriter Tom McRae for our long-awaited return to Wilton’s Music Hall on March 10th. Our ticket sales report as of this morning told me that we’ve currently sold 300 tickets for the show, which is absolutely staggering, and which means there are really only a handful left. If you want to come along for what will unquestionably be a delightful night of music and storytelling, seriously, don’t delay. Get your tickets now…

Tickets For March 10th

Some other things to share with you this week…

Our lovely friend Pauline Eyre has just launched a nationwide tour of her new show Anyone For Tennis? It opened last night with a sold-out show at Chiswick’s Tabard Theatre, and carries on for much of the rest of the year, taking in Edinburgh, Chichester, Barnes, Maidenhead and even Biggleswade (!). Birmingham’s up next a week on Friday (Feb 6th). Get tickets here - it’ll be brilliant.

More comedy - our other lovely friend Harry Hill has just launched a new YouTube show. His first guest is Stewart Lee. Why are you still here? Go and watch it already!!!

The Paris Review has Ten Writing Prompts to help unloosen your creative blocks.

I’m still keeping up with my year-long slow read of War And Peace (or, as my wife repeatedly asks me to stop calling it, My Year of WAP). For latecomers to the newsletter - since the start of the year of I’ve been following along with Substacker Simon Haisell’s slow reads project, taking in a chapter a day of Tolstoy’s epic. It’s remarkably fun, and a highly enjoyable way of tackling such a mammoth bit of fiction. If you’re interested in signing up to the Substack, I’ve got three month-long gift passes to hand out. If you’re interested, send me a message…

Emma Russell went for a whole month avoiding digital tools for an analogue throwback adventure, which she wrote about in The Guardian last week.

On a related note, I’ve stocked up on a supply of really very excellent notebooks from British stationery company Pith after spotting my friend Robin using one before Christmas. They are lovely - very high quality paper, a hand-sewn binding which allows you to lay the pages flat, a simple utilitarian, yet classy design. Strong recommend!

I had a long car journey to make on Saturday, and soundtracked with a very enjoyable playlist from Austin Kleon, which featured a track from Destroyer’s quite brilliant 2011 album Kaputt. Despite their somewhat aggressive-sounding name, Destroyer is a Canadian indie-rock band and not an 80’s Thrash-Metal act, and their music brings to mind prime-era Roxy Music and Steely Dan rather than Megadeath or Slayer^. I hadn’t listened to the album in ages, but it’s marvellous, and quite fitting for these dark wintry days. No surprises then, for guessing what’s our album of the week is…

Right, that’ll do. I’m off to Göteborg (or Gothenburg if you prefer) tomorrow, so next week’s newsletter may be either a little late or filled with lots of Scandi-noir references. Or both. Either way, I’ll be back soon enough for more news from OneTrackMinds HQ.

KB.

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Next Show - March 10th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here

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Here’s a poser for you to start the week: subjectively, which genre of music would you say is the most violently polarising?

I’m asking the question, but it’s not really up for discussion.

It’s Jazz, isn’t it?

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In my experience, no other genre of music comes close to the levels of passion that jazz manages to foster in both its fans and its detractors. My elder sister, who is very much in the latter camp, refers to jazz as ‘music for mad people’. The Fast Show’s ‘Jazz Club’ sketches seemed to sum up public opinion towards the genre pretty succinctly - jazz is smug, irritating and incomprehensible.

On the other hand, its fans - and count me very much among them - can wax lyrical about the glorious intricacies of a genre that is vast and multitudinous, quiet and loud, fast and slow; in short, all things to all people…

But, yeah, it’s polarising, hey? Which is why it was with some trepidation that we accepted an invitation from our lovely friend Deborah Bankole at the South Bank Centre to put on another series of Hidden Tracks workshops to tie in with the venue’s partnership with the Montreux Jazz Festival in March.

We’ve previously worked with Deborah and the great team at SBC to put on two Hidden Tracks events as part of previous London Literature Festivals, and both have been a huge success. Anyone can sign up to tell their story about a song that changed their life, and after a series of workshops at the venue, we select five storytellers to perform live on stage at the Purcell Room as part of the festival.

And so we’re doing it again - the only difference being that, this time around, we’re looking for stories specifically about jazz tracks/songs that have been life-changing in some way or other. We won’t be too anal or narrow about what constitutes a jazz track/song, and - as with all OneTrackMinds stories - your story doesn’t have to be about a song you actually like at all. But if you’re curious to take part, we want to hear from you.

The Hidden Tracks process is one of my favourite things about OneTrackMinds, and if you’ve not signed up to one of our workshops before, now’s your chance. It’s a wonderfully engaging process, and hugely gratifying to see our cohort of storytellers - many of whom have never ever stood up in front of an audience for any reason whatsoever - take to the Purcell Room stage and hold a room full of people in the palm of their hand, fully transformed into the master storytellers we know everyone can be.

One of our last cohort was Jumoké Fashiola, and she writes on the Southbank Centre website about how her experience of taking part in Hidden Tracks:

It’s made me a better writer. It’s made me realise the value of my own stories, even the bleak ones.

To take part in our program, you’ll need to be available for the initial workshops on either Sunday February 1st or Wednesday February 4th, and if you’re selected to be part of the cohort, you’ll need to be available on Wednesday evenings for most of the rest of February (11th, 18th, 25th and 4th March), with the live show taking place at 7:45pm on Saturday March 14th.

Trust me, it’s a whole lot of fun, and a genuinely life-changing experience. If you’re interested, you can sign up here. The deadline is midnight next Monday, so don’t delay…

Sign Up For Hidden Tracks

And if you can’t make the workshops, but do want to come along to see the stories, you can buy tickets for the main performance on Saturday March 14th here:

Tickets for Hidden Tracks March 14th

And of course, don’t forget our Main Stage show at Wilton’s Music Hall earlier that week (March 10th), tickets for which are practically flying out of the door. There are precious few left, even with six weeks to go before the event, so if you want to hear stories about life-changing songs from Tom McRae, Felix White, Michel Faber and Shapparak Khorsandi, then do not hang around. Get yours now!

Tickets for March 10th

Some other things to share with you this week…

If you’re new to Jazz and are yet to discover whether it is indeed music for mad people, or in fact mankind’s greatest artistic acheivement, then there are some great places to start. I’ve previously recommended the excellent podcast from our friends at ABSMR Start Here with Alexis Ffrench, which has a great rundown of where to start on your listening adventure. King of Substack Ted Gioia is also a fantastically accessible jazz writer, and his book How To Listen To Jazz is a really helpful guide to understanding some of the more immediately confusing elements of the genre. But really, if you’re a proper newcomer to jazz, or if you’ve always thought you hate it, the only place to start is here…

Saturday marked the tenth anniversary of the day David Bowie died, only a few days after the release of his last (and best!?) album Blackstar. I thoroughly enjoyed this superb documentary on Channel 4 last week which made me cry on a couple of occasions…

I’ve also been dipping into Bowie Land by Peter Carpenter while I’ve been eating my breakfast this past week and I’d highly recommend it as a somewhat sidelong look at the impact Bowie has had on UK Culture as a whole…

(You can get a copy from our Bookshop should you so wish…)

Our friend and former OneTrackMinds storyteller Jessie Buckley got profiled in The Guardian this weekend, to coincide with the release of her new film Hamnet, which is widely predicted to win her an Oscar (which would make her the first OneTrackMinds guest to win one…)

On Friday evening I popped over to Dreamhouse Records in Leyton to collect the first instalment in my year-long album subscription with them. Unlike other similar album subscription services from bigger record shops which often supply one album recommendation for all customers regardless of their tastes, Dreamhouse’s brilliant owner Jon hand-selects a new release for each customer based on what he reckons they’ll enjoy. And he certainly knows his stuff - based on a couple of emails in which I outlined the sort of things I enjoy listening to, Jon selected Ready For Heaven by Deradoorian, the solo-act of Dirty Projectors’ lyricist Angel Deradoorian. It’s a superb collection of art-pop songs that fully showcase her vocal talents, and I’m pretty confident that there is little to no chance I would have picked it up by myself if I’d been left to my own devices. If you’re interested in taking out a subscription yourself, there’s more information on Dreamhouse’s website - and they’ll deliver your record to your door if you don’t live near Leyton…

Hey, let’s make Ready For Heaven our Album of the Week so you can all revel in its delights. If you’ve only time for one song, make it Set Me Free…

Right, that’ll do! Don’t forget to sign up for our Hidden Tracks workshops at the South Bank Centre. We’ll be back next week with more news from OneTrackMinds HQ.

KB.

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Next Show - March 10th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here

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… and a slightly belated Happy New Year to you all. I trust you had a most wonderful Christmas and that you’re all very well rested for whatever 2026 is going to throw your way.

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I returned to work on Monday, having taken the advice of every right-thinking person I know and switched off my laptop for the duration of the Christmas period in an effort to be more present and stress-free over the holidays. Any mindful zen-like benefits of such restraint immediately went out of the window when I opened my laptop on Monday morning to find a veritable barrage of emails and a genuinely frightening backlog of seemingly urgent tasks that my period of digital abstinence had neglected. Would I have been better off checking in on my emails for a few minutes once a day? Would escaping the in-laws for an hour or so to stay on top of all my work actually have been a benefit to all concerned? Who could possibly say. Certainly the overwhelming avalanche of ‘paid-work’ tasks is one reason why this newsletter is reaching your inbox on Friday rather than Monday past…

That said, there has been an accidental benefit to the delay in writing to you, which is that I actually have some proper good old-fashioned news to share! Just yesterday, we managed to lock in our fourth guest for our show at Wilton’s Music Hall on March 10th. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you…

Shaparak Khorsandi! She’s one of the UKs most beloved comedians, and you’ll doubtless have seen her on Live at The Apollo, Mock The Week, Have I Got News For You, 8 Out of 10 Cats and countless other prime time TV favourites. (Side note: I think she’ll also be the first of our OneTrackMinds guests who’s spent time in the jungle for I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here). She’s also the author of two novels, including her debut Nina Is Not Okay, and a memoir called Scatter Brain, in which she revealed her recent diagnosis of ADHD. In short, she’s one of the funniest people in the land, and a terrific storyteller, and I can’t wait to hear her story of a song that changed her life.

Shaparak joins author Michel Faber, The Maccabees front man Felix White, and singer-songwriter Tom McRae on our increasingly amazing lineup for March 10th. If you want to come along, really don’t delay - tickets are already at Limited Availability, and I’ve never been more confident that we’ll sell out a show. It’s going to be amazing - tickets are available from just £10, and it’s our first show back at Wilton’s in over a year. Do yourself a favour and snap up your tickets today.

Tickets for March 10th

Here are some links and lovely things to share with you to start 2026 on the right foot…

Nobody does New Year’s resolutions any more do they? We’re all experienced enough to know that this is a terrible time of the year to put yourself under pressure to lose weight, run every day or finally finish your novel. That said, Jillian Hess in the always-brilliant newsletter Noted has something to say about the Paradox of Failed Resolutions…

Noted

The Paradox of Failed Resolutions

Ah, the seductive lure of a resolution. It’s like projecting a better version of yourself into the future, powered by ambition and a bit of willful forgetting…

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5 months ago · 126 likes · 24 comments · Jillian Hess

One resolution (if that’s the right word) that I’ve signed up to is to join Simon Haisell’s fantastic newsletter Footnotes and Tangents on his year-long read-along of War and Peace. It’s a deliberately slow read - one chapter a day, running throughout the whole year - and a week in, it’s a revelatory way to explore a great piece of writing. It’s not too late to join in - and I urge you to do so!

Footnotes and Tangents

War and Peace 2026

Welcome to the main page for the 2026 slow read of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, a chapter a day…

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8 months ago · 145 likes · 71 comments · Simon Haisell

While we’re still on resolutions, I enjoyed this piece in The Guardian - music writers resolving to ‘get’ artists that they’ve previously never liked. It features a piece on Joni Mitchell by our friend Michael Cragg - I felt very seen…

Oliver Burkeman has the secret to being happy in 2026 - prioritise pleasure.

This is brilliant - music generated by traffic patterns on a motorway near Dublin. Watch it for three seconds - I promise you’ll be hooked…

Derek Thompson shares 26 of the Most Important Ideas for 2026

Derek Thompson

The 26 Most Important Ideas For 2026

Thank you all so much for reading and subscribing to this newsletter. It’s been an absolute blast whose success in its first six months has tremendously exceeded my expectations. If you’re arriving for the first time and like what you see, please subscribe…

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6 months ago · 2332 likes · 144 comments · Derek Thompson

Our Record of the Week comes c/o two of our newest newsletter subscribers - my brother in law and his wife (Hey Toby! Hey Sarah!), who were our most favourite house guests over the Christmas period, not least because they introduced me to the glorious delights of Japanese singer-songwriter Kingo Hamada, and his 1982 album midnight cruisin’, which I present here without further comment. Enjoy!

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Right, that’ll do! I’ll be back on Monday. Until then,

KB.

Next Show - March 10th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here

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I trust you’re all very well. We’re into the last stretch - just over a week until Christmas, and four more work days for me before I ceremonially close my laptop and switch off for the rest of the year.

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Before then, there’s the small matter of our OneTrackMinds Christmas Dinner, which will see Adam and I dining in high style after the heartwarming response to our Bookshop-related fundraising callout in last week’s newsletter.

Thanks to all of your support, we raised a staggering £11.70 in Bookshop commissions last week, which is something like a 500% increase on the week before. Huge thanks to everyone who bought a book from our affiliate page, and especially to whoever forked out for a copy of Martin Parr’s wonderful autobiography in photographs Utterly Lazy and Innattentive, which earned us £3.00 in commission on its own!

Only two of you sent over your proofs of purchase though, thus making the prize draw to win a copy of one of my favourite books of the year a somewhat underpowered affair. But rather than flip a coin to decide the winner, in the spirit of all things Christmas, I’m going to reward both of them - so congratulations to Morgan Simes and Maria Poullais! I’ll be in touch shortly with information about your prizes!

And because our appeals to your charitable nature were made in perhaps rather poor taste, considering that, in reality, Adam and I are both very, very far from poor and hungry wretches this Christmas, instead of spending our Bookshop sales commission on the two Pret Christmas Lunch sandwiches we could afford with our payout, we’re going to donate it to The Book Trust, a wonderful charity that provides books for children who can’t otherwise afford them. And because £11.70 is a bit of a paltry donation, I’m going to round it up and double it £25. And if Adam does as he’s promised and matches that donation, we’ll be sending a not ungenerous £50 to the lovely Book Trust people.

Blimey, I feel like Michael Caine at the end of A Muppet Christmas Carol…

Hey, do you know what? Tickets to our next show at Wilton's Music Hall are now at Limited Availability! If you don’t want to miss out on hearing stories about life-changing songs from Michel Faber, Felix White, Tom McRae and two as yet unconfirmed other guests, then you know what to do…

Tickets for March 10th

I dare say tickets to our show would make a pretty fantastic Christmas present if you’re short on ideas. And we could help make it a little bit extra special too. Drop mea line to discuss…

Some other things to share with you this week…

RIP Rob Reiner… what an absolute tragedy. Details of his death are still emerging, but The Guardian’s rundown of his Five Greatest Films is a brilliant way to remember his absolutely wonderful career as a director.

The newly pay-walled Observer have put together a click-baity list of their 25 Best Albums of the Century so far, and I’d be falling right into their trap if I were to get cross about some of their inclusions (Kid A over In Rainbows, for instance, or Getting Killed by Geese, which came out a few months ago, and which the Observer’s former colleagues at The Guardian didn't even think is the best album of this year, let alone the last 25…). Far better to use it as an excuse to re-listen to Bjork’s Vespertine on my commute into the office this morning…

To be fair, Getting Killed by Geese is one of my favourite records of the year, and having thus far failed to mention it in any of this year’s newsletters, I’m going to hereby garland it with the honour of being the final OneTrackMinds Record of The Week of 2025.

(If you only listen to one song off the record, Au Pays Du Cocaine is a masterpiece…)

Another last minute gift idea for the music lover in your life - superlative local independent record store Dreamhouse Records in Leyton are offering a Vinyl Subscription package, which would make an excellent present. After a brief consultation with shop owner John, you’ll receive a hand-selected album, tailored to your own particular tastes, every month for as long as your subscription lasts. It’s available in 3, 6 and 12 month varieties. Learn more here…

We took the girls to the confusingly named Soho Theatre Walthamstow yesterday to watch our old friends from Showstopper put on their always excellent improvised kids musical. I’d recommend it to everyone with youngsters, but yesterday’s matinee was their last kids show of the year. The far ruder and, consequently, far funnier ‘adult’ (not like that) show is on tonight - but if that’s too short notice, you can book for their first show of 2026 which happens on January 26th at the Cambridge Theatre in the West End.

Those of you with young families still looking for some festive entertainment could do far worse than pop along to our home of Wiltons Music Hall to see Potted Panto, returning for the third year in a row. The show claims to deliver 7 pantomimes in 80 minutes, and my eldest Malin absolutely loved it. It runs until January 3rd, and tickets are available here.

And if you’re in the mood for some very unfestive entertainment, I can highly recommend Lurker, which opened in cinemas this weekend past. Director Alex Russell cut his teeth on The Bear, and Netflix’s excellent limited series Beef, but this is altogether darker and creepier fare. It’s like Saltburn, but actually good…

Right, that’ll do! And with that, I’m signing off for 2025. It’s not been the best year for all things OneTrackMinds, I’m sure you’ll agree… but delivering only the one live show this year has only made us hungrier for all the joys and delights that 2026 will surely bring. It’s our tenth anniversary year, and it’s going to be very exciting. I’ll see you on the other side - until then, have a very, very wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year.

KB.

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Next Show - March 10th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here

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I trust you’re all well. Let me just say I am very much awash in the Christmas spirit on this Monday evening. By which I mean: I am very excited at the prospect of clocking off work for a couple of weeks. This has been a long year, and while it seems shamefully ungrateful to say I’ll be glad to see the end of it, I am excited at the prospect of putting it - and the many varieties of stressors that it has brought with it - very much behind me in a couple of weeks time.

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This past week though, when I’ve not been powering through my day-job to-do lists, panic-buying Christmas gifts and stocking up on unnecessary quantities of supplies for the Big Day itself, I’ve been gently chuntering along with various administrative and logistical tasks for our next show on March 10th. We’ve no new guests to announce this week for our grand return to Wilton’s Music Hall, but it seems our current lineup of Michel Faber, Felix White and Tom McRae is very enticing to many of you, because we’ve nearly sold 200 tickets already. At this rate, we’re looking at a very sexy sold out Music Hall, and that is something I cannot wait to see.

If you don’t want to miss out on our big homecoming show, then act now and buy yourselves some goddamn tickets already!

Tickets for March 10th

In case it’s been a while since you saw a live show, he’s a little reminder of the magic on offer…

In other news, last week’s last week’s shameless plugging of the OneTrackMinds Bookshop paid off so well that I’m going to do it all over again. Yes indeed - after dedicating objectively too large a percentage of our newsletter’s word count to explaining the economics of our bookshop commission rate, sales literally doubled over the previous week, as we sold a copy of Derek Owusu’s Losing The Plot as well as a copy of Rhik Samadder’s I Never Said I Loved You (very probably to the same person -no doubt a fan of deeply moving heart wrenchingly personal memoirs). Our commission from said sales was a whopping £2.30, which, when added to the previous week’s taking of £1.10, means we’re positively rolling in it.

Now, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Next Tuesday is our annual OneTrackMinds Christmas Dinner, a time when Adam and I sit down over a meal and share jolly stories of the year we’ve had together doing the show. Given the somewhat lacklustre year we’ve had (only one live show, which didn’t particularly sell very well), our Christmas meal is shaping up to be a fairly meagre affair…

But, with a little help from you guys, you can turn things around for us. Here’s what I’m thinking - we’ve already established that our commission from our Bookshop has brought in £3.40 over the past fortnight. A Pret Christmas Lunch sandwich, in all its Cranberry-sauced Turkey-stuffinged goodness, costs, I believe £4.50. That means, if between now and next Tuesday we can sell another two books via our bookshop, Adam and I will be able to indulge in one half of a Pret Christmas Lunch sandwich each. And you know what? It’ll be the best tasting Christmas meal we’ll have ever eaten…

To make things even more interesting for you, if you buy a book via our OneTrackMinds Bookshop page, and you then send us an email (info@onetrackminds.uk) with your proof of purchase, you’ll be entered into a competition. I’ll pick a winner, and send them a copy of one of my favourite books of the past year. How does that sound? To make it fair, anyone who’s bought a book from our bookshop over the past 12 months is also eligible. Let the games begin…

Shop at Our Bookshop

A few quick things to share with you this week…

RIP Martin Parr - a Holy Grail OneTrackMinds guest we never managed to get on the show. Most famously a photographer, but also a master storyteller. His final book Utterly Lazy and Inattentive is part-autobiography, part-retrospective of his work, and would make an absolutely wonderful gift…

“Everybody should be selling or licensing their voice and their skills to these companies, otherwise they’re just going to take it anyway.” Dave Stewart of Eurythmics says that AI is an unstoppable force which musicians need to embrace. Which is pretty bleak if you ask me…

The Guardian’s staff put together a lovely list of 25 Ways To Get Into The Christmas Spirit, including contributions from our friend Stuart Heritage, who recommends carrying home a Christmas Tree, which I can vouch for as working most excellently.

Also: watching a family Christmas movie, in particular, the greatest animated Christmas film of all time, which is - and don’t bother to argue with me on this because I am correct on this point - Klaus (available on Netflix).

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Right, that’ll do! We’ll be back next week for our last newsletter of the year. Until then…

KB.

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Next Show - March 10th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here

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Somehow, it’s already December, which is making itself felt here in London via some alarmingly short days, gloomy skies, and the very welcome counterbalance of Christmas lights, festive decorations and the as-yet-not-irritating sound of Michael Bublé on the Siri box.

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You’ll be pleased to hear that preparations for our next show on March 10th are moving on apace. As I suggested in last week’s newsletter, Adam and I spent a very pleasant evening together on Thursday talking through our plans for 2026, during which we bashed through some marketing ideas for March, discussed some plans for our very special 10th Anniversary Show on May 20th, and played around with a few ideas for how to get our podcast up and running again.

Part of the reason we’ve let that go fallow for a while is because I’ve never really been very satisfied with the current format we’ve been using, wherein we’ve shared two vaguely themed stories from our live shows. It’s not just that the themes have felt increasingly tenuous as we’ve burned through our back catalogue of recordings, it’s also that I feel that there’s something that gets lost in translation when we try to transfer the stories from a live setting to a podcast. It feels like something’s missing, that somehow the podcast feels like a sort of weak ‘from concentrate’ version of the live show, and it can never quite recapture the rich magical broth that happens when we’re all in a room together…

It seems like you guys are also hungry for some of that magical broth though, because sales are going really well for March. We’re already nearly halfway to a sellout, which, with over three months to go, is very gratifying (and we’ve already sold more tickets than we did to either of our last two shows at Kings Place…). Indeed, I was at Wilton’s last Monday night for the press night of their excellent Magic/Variety show The Enigmatist, and being back in that great old music hall made me realise again just how much I’ve missed it. It’s going to be great being back on stage there. Make sure you don’t miss out on getting tickets yourself…

Tickets for March 10th

Furthermore, we’ve added another guest to our lineup - the singer-songwriter Tom McRae.

Tom’s self-titled debut album was released around the time I finished school, and I listened to it A LOT. Along with a lot of other singer-songwriter acts like Badly Drawn Boy, Ed Harcourt, Kings of Convenience and Turin Brakes, Tom was somewhat lazily lumped into what the music press at the time called the ‘New Acoustic Movement’. But Tom’s songs stood out, not least because of a very cutting and caustic wit that ran through a lot of his writing1.

He’s a brilliant performer, and a fantastic writer (as his frequent blog posts attest to), so I’m sure he’s going to be a wonderful guest on the show in March. If you’re not familiar with his work, let me present for your listening pleasure, from the previously mentioned self-titled debut album, The Boy With The Bubblegun…

Some other things to share with you this week:

Huge thanks to whichever of you it was that clicked on one of the many (many!) links to the OneTrackMinds Bookshop in our last newsletter and purchased a copy of George Saunders’s A Swim In A Pond In The Rain via our affiliate link. In doing so you earned us £1.10 in sweet, sweet profit! That’s almost as much money as we made from our last Kings Place show2! After such a resounding financial success, I’m going to link to our Bookshop page again in the hope that many (many!) more of you will be similarly motivated when buying your Christmas presents…

Shop at our Bookshop

Talking of books, I finally finished reading Crime & Punishment last week, which I mention not to come across all fancy and intellectual, but as a slick and effortless segue in to telling you about a Substack I came across at the weekend, called Footnotes and Tangents.

Footnotes and Tangents

Join the 2026 'War and Peace' Slow Read

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7 months ago · 91 likes · 32 comments · Simon Haisell

Simon Haisell, who writes the newsletter, runs regular read alongs of great works of literature, paced in a way that makes it very easy to fit in alongside the madness of modern life. His War and Peace read-along lasts all year, with participants reading one chapter every day, with a weekly newsletter each Wednesday full of notes, further reading and other links. It sounds great, and I’m definitely signing up. Who’s with me?

Leave a comment

If you’re a bit hesitant about jumping into War and Peace, artist, writer and Mayor of Substack Austin Kleon chose it as his ‘Big Summer Book’ this year, and wrote very persuasively of its modern relevance:

Austin Kleon

Breaking bread with the dead

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there…

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a year ago · 141 likes · 28 comments · Austin Kleon

And while we’re still on the subject of books, our friend Joe Dunthorne’s latest Children of Radium was named as one of The Observer’s books of the year. Joe actually sent me a copy earlier in the year ahead of publication, but so chaotic have things been for me in 2025 that I only got around to reading it a few weeks ago. It’s brilliant, of course, a very funny and deeply moving true-story about Joe’s own great-grandfather.

It was the British Independent Film Awards (or BIFAs) last night - I was supposed to be there, but I was struck down by a migraine so I missed out on the festivities. I was very pleased to see that our friend and former OneTrackMinds storyteller Tom Basden took home three awards for his marvellous film The Ballad of Wallis Island, including Best Joint Lead Performance and Best Screenplay. If you haven’t seen it yet, let this be a reminder for you to do so.

Another big winner last night was Pillion, a debut feature film from young British director Harry Lighton, and which deservedly took home the prize for Best British Independent Film. It’s one of the best things I’ve seen in ages, and quite unlike anything I’ve seen before. It opened in cinemas this weekend, and it’s terrific - very funny, very moving, and very very very sexually explicit. Lots of fun.

Long time readers will know that I’m a big jazz fan, but despite many attempts to wrap my head around the supposed delights of Free Jazz, I’ve never quite understood it. If you’re curious about finding out more about this most divisive of musical genres, Alexis Petrifidis went on something of a Free Jazz odyssey in The Guardian.

Our Album of the Week comes from another film I saw last week; on Tuesday I went to a screening of the forthcoming Spanish movie Sirāt by Oliver Laxe, which won the prestigious Special Jury Prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. It’s a terrific film about a father searching for his missing daughter at an illegal rave in Morocco. (Peter Bradshaw gave it a terrible review, but seriously, don’t listen to him…). Much of the film’s success is owed to the utterly spellbinding score by French ‘sound architect’ Kangding Ray. Listen as loudly as possible…

Right, that’ll do! I’ll be back next week with a mini rundown of some of the best things I’ve read, watched and listened to this year. Until then,

KB.

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Next Show - March 10th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here

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Bloody hell, this isn’t very good is it? Weeks - nay months - have passed since my last missive, which doesn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence does it?. To say I’ve dropped the ball here is something of an understatement. My laxness is inexcusable - nevertheless, I’m going to blame my failure to stay on top of this, my one supposedly regular maintenance task for OneTrackMinds business, on ongoing chaos related to moving house, an ordeal (for that is precisely the right word) that, I’m glad to say, is nearly over. We’re in at last, and though we’re still sharing several rooms of our new home with our builders (shout out to Sergiu and Valentin!), the end is in sight…

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I did think I’d hold off writing to you all again until we are properly out of the house-move chaos, and I can more reliably reassure you of a return to regular service, but I’ve been spurred into action by some exciting news pertaining to our 2026 shows.

Those of you with a stronger memory will remember that we’re moving back ‘home’ to Wilton’s Music Hall next year, with our first show on Tuesday March 10th. Last week, we locked in the first two guests in our lineup, and we are pretty damn excited by both of them.

First up is Felix White.

Many of you will know Felix as a writer from London, the best-selling author of two books - It’s Always Summer Somewhere, a highly enjoyable memoir-cum-travel book about his life as a cricket fan. He followed that up in October this year with Whatever Will Be, Will Be, a just-as-enjoyable memoir-cum-travel book about his life as a football fan. Both books are delightful, whether you’re a sports fan or not.

Many more of you will likely know Felix as the lead singer of Indie-rock legends The Maccabees.

Yes, I’m talking about that Felix White.

And he’s going to be on our show, telling a story about a song that changed his life, in little under four months’ time!

Joining Felix on March 10th is Michel Faber.

Now, Michel isn’t (to the best of my knowledge) the lead singer in an era-defining Indie Rock band. But he is the author of several best-selling, award-winning books, many of which have been adapted into incredible TV series and films - including Under The Skin and (my personal favourite) The Crimson Petal And The White1. He’s also a huge fan of music, and his most recent book Listen is the most engaging and thought-provoking exploration of why we listen to music. He’s going to be a fantastic guest.

Two down, three to go - but already, you’ll have to agree that’s shaping up to be one hell of a line-up. What a way for us to come back home, hey? We’ll be announcing more guests in the run up to Christmas, but if you want to make sure you’re there to hear Michel and Felix talk about the songs that changed their lives, then you’d better get a ticket or three for our show on March 10th.

Tickets for March 10th at Wilton's

They’re officially selling fast according to Wilton’s flash new website, so you make sure you don’t miss out.

(Quick public service announcement - the show starts at 7pm (not 7:30pm as has been the case for a while), so you’ll want to try and get there a bit earlier than usual).

All the while, we’re working on a plan for our hopefully glorious tenth anniversary show at Wilton’s on Wednesday May 20th. Adam and I are meeting up this week to discuss what we can do to make it extra special, a way to honour ten years of telling stories about life-changing songs. We’d love to hear what you’d want to see at an anniversary show - any favourite storytellers you’d like us to invite back? Any Holy Grail guests you’d like us to have a go at adding to the lineup? Any songs you’d like Adam and I to sing unaccompanied for your listening pleasure? Let us know in the comments.

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Tickets for May go on sale very soon. Watch this space…

Some more things to share with you this week…

Fans of True Crime documentaries will want to keep their eyes peeled for forthcoming feature documentary The Zodiac Killer Project, directed by our friend and former OneTrackMinds storyteller Charlie Shackleton. The film is an extremely entertaining and somewhat unsettling, multi-layered look at the veritable explosion of true-crime docs, borne out of Charlie’s failed attempt to make his own one about the Zodiac killer, based on a best-selling non-fiction book he thought he’d managed to get the rights to. When that deal fell through, Charlie had to change tack… He wrote about it in this Saturday’s Guardian. And you should try and catch the film in the cinema when it’s released on Friday.

I meant to tell you all about Cameron Crowe’s highly enjoyable and very much inaccurately titled memoir The Uncool, which was published back in October, and which I enjoyed reading over a weekend while my kids were away. Before he became a filmmaker, Crowe spent his teens and early twenties as an unreasonably precocious music writer for Rolling Stone, hanging out with Bowie, Led Zeppelin and countless other legends, despite being barely out of high school. He fictionalised his experience in Almost Famous, but The Uncool unpacks the true stories behind the almost unbelievably glamorous world of music journalism in the 1970s. It’s a lot of fun.

I’ve spent a good chunk of this year making my way through the collected work of Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgård, and perhaps you can appreciate one of the blessings of me not having published a regular newsletter this year is that you haven’t had to endure me banging on about how obsessed I am with him and his writing. (Very quickly - go and buy yourself a copy of The Morning Star. You can thank me later). Our friend and former OneTrackMinds storyteller Chris Power interviewed him ahead of the release of his new book The School Of Night, for this weekend’s paper.

Another book for you to check out - Dusty Henry (who’s excellent substack Another Thought I linked to a few weeks back) has forged a niche as the peerless expert on 20th Century Ambient music, and as if to cement said position, has recently written a book entitled 20th Century Ambient (published by the team behind the 33 1/3 series), which I haven’t read yet, but which is on my Christmas list…

I’ve been linking to a lot of books this week, so here’s a reminder to shop at the OneTrackMinds affiliated Bookshop.org.uk page - when you buy a book from there, we get a few pence in affiliate fees. You get a nice new book (from a Bezos-free proper bookshop) AND you get to support OneTrackMinds! Win win!

Shop The OneTrackMinds Bookshop

And while we’re still talking about ambient music, our Album of the Week recommendation is from the hard-to-pronounce but easy-to-love ambient-adjacent electronic artist Oneohtrix Point Never, whose new record Tranquility was released over the weekend and which I’ve been listening to on repeat while writing and rewriting this newsletter.

Listen on Apple Music.

Right that’ll do…

Look, I’m going to tell you I’ll be back again next week with more news from OneTrackMinds HQ because that seems like the polite thing to do, but given the number of times I’ve promised that this year only to then disappear for several months, you’d be well within your rights to read these words with a healthy dose of scepticism. I’m sorry. I’ll do my very best. It’s not you, it’s me… etc etc. Until next time…

KB.

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Next Show - March 10th 2026 - Wiltons Music Hall | Tickets Here

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I’m interrupting your workday for the second time this week, because I wanted to share some exciting news…

We’re coming home!

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Yes, we’re delighted to tell you that in 2026 we’re moving the show back to our original venue of Wilton’s Music Hall. We’ve had a lot of fun at Kings Place, and the team there have been amazing to work with. But when the opportunity arose for us to go back to where it all started, well, we couldn’t say no…

Our homecoming show will be on Tuesday March 10th, and tickets have just gone on sale this morning. Tickets run from £18 full price, to just £7.50 concessions. We’ve not confirmed any guests just yet, but you can be sure we’ll have a lineup worthy of our triumphant return to where it all began.

Tickets for March 10th 2026

Even more excitingly, later on in the year we’ll be celebrating our 10th anniversary with another show on Wednesday May 20th, ten years and one day since our very first show. The 10th Anniversary Show tickets aren’t on sale just yet, but mark your diaries now… it’s going to be epic.

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What this means is that our show on October 23rd (in just over two weeks time) will be our last at Kings Place for the foreseeable future. So if you’ve not made it along to one of our shows in this most gorgeous venue, make sure you don’t miss out. Our storytellers on the night include Paul Morley, Howard Goodall, Vicki Stone, Tricia Duffy and Dan Franklin, and tickets are selling fast.

Tickets for October 23rd 2025

See you soon,

KB.

Next Show - October 23rd 2025 | Tickets Here

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On Wednesday last week, I had a very lovely chat with Paul Morley, who you no doubt already know is one of our guests on Thursday October 23rd.

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I’m extremely excited that Paul is joining us this month, because I’ve been a big admirer of his for many years. He’s a hugely influential writer, critic and journalist with many strings to his bow1, but I first came across him on The Late Review in the late 1990s.

The Late Review (later known as Review, and later still as Newsnight Review) feels like a bizarre throwback to an entirely different era, in that it was a long running series on a main terrestrial TV channel in which assorted writers, critics and journalists discussed the latest cultural events in an entirely serious, unironic way. Paul Morley was part of a rolling cast list that also included Irish poet Tom Paulin (whose strange, squeezed, exasperated manner of speaking gave him the impression of being terminally constipated), Will Self, Tony Parsons, Ekow Eshun and not one but two unrelated Greers (Germaine and Bonnie). It was delightfully engaging TV, made all the more so by the way in which the guests tried to out intellectualise each other, often disagreeing vociferously about the virtues (or lack of them) of various art gallery openings, theatre revivals or recently published novels.

As a young adult with ambitions towards the pretentious, I loved the fact that something like Late Review existed, and, as comically preposterous as they occasionally were, that critics like Germaine Greer, Tom Paulin and Paul Morley were given space on TV to openly discuss films, TV shows, books and art like these were important events that actually mattered.

There’s been much written lately about the loss of this critical space in our current post-internet age. In The New York Times David Brooks lamented a lost time When Novels Mattered. The Guardian published an article over the summer entitled The Death of The Review. And in The New Yorker, Kelefa Sanneh explored How Music Criticism Lost Its Edge. Cultural and economic forces have meant that newspaper cultural review sections are shrinking, dedicated music magazines have gone bust or disappeared online, and even stalwart internet-based review sites have faded into shadows of their former selves (I’m looking at you Pitchfork…)

Most pertinently, I’ve been thinking a lot about Rachel Aroesti’s brilliant piece in The Guardian, calling for a general rethinking of our attitudes towards cultural snobbery. She asks:

What if cultural snobbery, so effectively cast off over the past decade, wasn’t a waste of time? What if it did actually uphold certain standards? What if – faced with a future dominated by social media advertainment and AI-generated content – it’s our only hope?

It’s a really interesting question, and one that definitely appeals to me. In a world where we’re bombarded with content, it’s sometimes tempting to try and keep up with everything, which leads to a horrible sense of overwhelm. Suddenly, there’s a great deal of value in a well-informed critic, who can guide us towards the good stuff so we can avoid the seemingly endless barrage of crap that’s served up to us. And that’s increasingly hard to do. I don’t know about you, but I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve fallen for the tricks of Netflix’s gargantuan PR machine, whose carpet bombing of newspaper ‘review’ pages has lead to so many wasted hours watching whichever new ‘prestige’ TV series that turns out to be really quite terrible.

Being a critic doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be a snob (indeed, Paul Morley is living proof of this). Criticism doesn’t have to descend into zero-sum, ‘this is good, therefore that is shit’, Blur vs Oasis tribalism. But there’s something so enlivening about well-argued, passionate declarations of love for art in all its forms, and it’s a crying shame that it seems to be declining.

The Guardian article quotes the novelist David Foster Wallace who wrote the kind of book that is

…more apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by-product of hard work and discomfort.

I hope that no one who comes to a OneTrackMinds show ever finds it hard work. But there’s something about this approach to music that we try to foster at our storytelling nights. One of the reasons that we ask our guests to stay on stage after they’ve told their story is to encourage our audience to listen - to really listen - to the song they’ve just spoken about. Even if it’s a hugely popular song that everyone has heard a thousand times, there’s huge value to be had from sitting still, without your phone, without the mental chatter of our busy lives, and really deeply listening to it once more.

It’s the cultural equivalent of not rushing your food - taking the time to consider what we consume, rather than scarfing down the whole all-you-can-eat buffet we’re presented with on a daily basis. I hope you can come along to our next show on Thursday October 23rd, so you can hear Paul Morley and our four other fantastic guests tell you stories about the songs that mean the most to them. You won’t have to work hard, but you will discover the true pleasure that comes from a cultural connection that you’ve genuinely engaged with.

Tickets for October 23rd

Some other things to share with you this week…

The Booker Prize Shortlist was published last week, and our friend and former OneTrackMinds storyteller Chris Power was on the jury. Here he writes in The Guardian about how they made their decision.

Unsurprisingly, some of the Booker nominees pop up in The New York Times’s list of the Best Books Of The Year so far…

Our friend Andrew O’Hagan has a new book out called On Friendship, and the reviews are lovely…

New Podcast Alert: States of Independence is a new series that shares an insider’s history into some of the greatest and most influential independent record labels, starting with Beggars Banquet.

Despite some very lovely sunshine today, it’s hard to escape the fact that Autumn has most definitely arrived here in London. Dusty Henry has a very enjoyable selection of six Ambient albums to soundtrack the season…

Another Thought

Mono No Aware: Six Ambient Albums for Fall

Fall is a very transitional time. For me in Seattle, summer seems to really hang on. September kind of feels like the best part of summer. It’s always a little surprising how it “still feels nice outside” this late in the year. And slowly, the rain starts to come back. You know the rest – trees’ leaves changing, back to school and all that. It’s a nosta…

Read more

9 months ago · 33 likes · 10 comments · Dusty Henry

…while Esquire has a list of 25 Classic Fall Autumn Movies To Watch Right Now.

Right, that’ll do! We’ll be back later this week with a very exciting announcement… Watch this space! Until then, all the best,

KB.

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Next Show - October 23rd 2025 | Tickets Here

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You’d think, with all the aches and pains coursing through my body, my nightly battles with insomnia and my general confusion at the often utterly confounding way that people under twenty use the English language, that I scarcely need any more signs that I am getting uncomfortably old.

Nevertheless, I was confronted last week with the frankly horrifying news that Ryan (‘not Bryan’) Adams’ peerless debut album Heartbreaker is twenty-five years old this month.

Ugh…

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It’s somewhat unnerving to think that a selection of songs that soundtracked a great deal of my young-adult mopery is now a quarter of a century old. If you’ve not heard Heartbreaker - indeed, if you’ve not heard of Ryan (not Bryan) Adams at all - let me direct you to your nearest streaming app without delay, for it’s a genuinely lovely collection of beautifully crafted country-infused love songs, full of youth’s bittersweet combination of cynicism and hope.

Say what you like about Ryan (not Bryan), he’s no slacker - since Heartbreaker’s release in 2000, he’s released no fewer than twenty-three (!) studio albums, as well as six live albums, which is pretty remarkable (especially for someone who very nearly got #Me-Too’d out of a career after allegations of sexual harassment surfaced in 2019)1.

On top of all of that, he’s also released a further five ‘cover albums’ - entire re-recorded, re-interpreted recordings of albums of other artists’s records - to generally excellent results. I imagine he came upon the idea after including a cover of Oasis’s Wonderwall on his 2004 album/double-EP Love Is Hell, which is far and away his most listened song on Spotify. And after knocking out a banging country-rock version of Taylor Swift’s album 1989 (his version of Bad Blood is completely brilliant), he’s landed on a formula that works. And so we land on the point of this whole newsletter, an excuse to share with you this absolute gem, served up to my by Apple Music’s magical algorithm over the weekend:

Your mileage may vary, depending on how partial you are to the music of Nebraska-era Bruce Springsteen, but it’s worth a listen at the very least. It’s been in my ears an awful lot since I first heard it over the weekend, and, you know, I think I prefer it to the original… Feel free to disagree in the comments below.

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Talking, as we were, of anniversaries, next May will mark the tenth anniversary of our first ever live show at Wilton’s Music Hall, which is quite astonishing. Rather than being a cause for alarm (although looking back at pictures from that first show, I can scarcely recognise myself), we are beyond excited at the prospect of celebrating a decade of music and storytelling. You can bet we’re going to celebrate in style. We’re keeping the details under wraps for now, but watch this space for more news in the coming weeks…

On to more pressing matters, and with a view to our upcoming show at Kings Place on October 23rd, our lovely friends in the marketing department at Kings Place saw our recent flyer design, which I shared with you in the last newsletter, and clearly thought to themselves that they could do better. And so they did. Witness:

Ignoring the slight on my admittedly piss-poor Canva skills, we’re delighted with their work, and very excited to be hustling up an audience for our show on October 23rd. If you’ve not bought your tickets yet, don’t delay.

Tickets For October 23rd

Some other nuggets to share with you this week…

My wife’s niece is staying with us at the moment, which meant we had free babysitting on last Saturday night, an occurrence even rarer than the recent Blue Moon. We made sure we didn’t waste it, and in the spirit of undiluted spontaneity, the likes of which we’ve not experienced in seven-odd years, we booked tickets to to see Yorkshire comedian Kieran Hodgson’s Edinburgh show Voice Of America at the Soho Theatre.

Strong recommend! Unwarranted swipes at Green Day2 aside, the show is a total delight. It’s very funny, very politically astute, and, like everything to do with America these days, more than a little bit alarming. He’s a brilliant storyteller - I’ve added him to our target list for future OneTrackMinds guests - and there’s not a word out of place throughout the hour-long running time. The show is touring until the end of October. Catch it if you can.

I’m slightly surprised by the lack of fuss over the release of the Spinal Tap sequel. It opened in cinemas, last week but doesn’t seem to be bothering the box office charts particularly. I’ve not seen it yet, but the reviews seem generally positive - which is unsurprising, given the unblemished record of classic comedies forged by the genius of Christopher Guest. It’s on the to-watch list…

And talking of comic genius, I came across this compilation on YouTube of One Song To The Tune of Another from Radio 4’s peerless I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. If you’re unfamiliar with the format, it’s very much a ‘does what it says on the tin’ situation. Comedians sing the words to one song to the tune of another, with unfailingly hilarious results. The all-time undisputed classic of the genre is Tony Hawks (not that one) singing the words of Girlfriend In A Coma by The Smiths to the tune of Tiptoe Through The Tulips, which is included below at 3 mins 12 seconds. Enjoy…

Right, that’ll do. Thanks for bearing with me - I know these missives have been significantly less regular than I’d like them to be lately. Believe it or not, we’re still in the midst of a long, drawn-out house sale/renovation/relocation, which is proving to be testing all my energies… hopefully normal service can resume very soon. Until then, much love…

KB.

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Next Show - October 23rd 2025 | Tickets Here

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Here we are again - a day later than scheduled (I’m going to blame the tube strikes because that’s what everyone else is doing), but a great improvement on the eight week gap between previous newsletters, so hooray for me. I trust you’re all well and, if you’re in London, you’re enjoying this lovely little burst of late summer sunshine which is surely taking the edge off any transport-related stress.

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We’re very much getting back in the rhythm here at OneTrackMinds HQ, with all of our energies focused on getting a lovely sold out crowd into Hall One at Kings Place on October 23rd. To that end, we printed up some very lovely flyers last week that have gone in to circulation in the Kings Place area. Witness:

The keen-eyed among you will notice that we’ve now got a FULL LINEUP of our regulation five storytellers on the night. Indeed, we confirmed our fifth guest mere hours after last week’s newsletter went out (perhaps a sign that I should wait until Tuesday before sending this out as a matter of course…)

Yes, we’re delighted to tell you that our fifth guest on Thursday October 23rd is Tricia Duffy aka Little Lore.

Tricia is, like so many of our brilliant guests, the wearer of many hats. As Little Lore, she performs Americana-inspired folk songs heavily rooted in storytelling, bringing British wit and wordplay to country music. She’s also the host of In Ten Years Time, a podcast all about how to live a creative life. We had a chat last Monday afternoon that was supposed to be a five minute check-in about how an OneTrackMinds show works, and ended up being a fascinating near-hour-long discussion about Artificial Intelligence (Tricia is about to start a PhD at Royal Holloway on the subject), songwriting and creativity. If that's anything to go by, she’s going to be a fascinating guest on the show.

She joins Paul Morley, Howard Goodall, Dan Franklin and Vikki Stone for what is a truly stellar lineup of storytellers on October 23rd. I’m delighted to say that tickets are selling really well, so if you want to come along, don’t delay. Get your tickets now!

Tickets for October 23rd

Some other things to share with you this week:

I got a very nice surprise while eating my cornflakes this morning and perusing today’s digital edition of The Guardian. OneTrackMinds gets a delightfully unexpected shout out in Remona Aly’s essay in G2 about her passion for Jane Austen. That’s our first mention in a national newspaper! Hooray!

Pavement are an interesting band, hey? Half of you (and maybe that’s a conservative estimate) will have no idea who they are. But those of you who do know their music, will likely be, like me, passionately fanatical about it. Alex Ross Perry’s spectacularly creative documentary Pavements, which is now showing on Mubi, describes the band as ‘the most important and influential band of the 90s’, a statement seemingly designed to troll fans of Nirvana, Pearl Jam or Guns n’Roses, but the film makes its case persuasively and in a way that is undeniably entertaining. If you’re not a fan of the band, consider this your gateway drug… You can thank me later.

Talking of gateway drugs, I’ve recently discovered a gloriously OneTrackMinds-flavoured podcast produced by ABRSM (or the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, for whom we did a special OneTrackMinds show earlier in the summer). It’s called Start Here, and the premise is brilliantly simple - if you’re interested in discovering a particular genre of music, but you’re not sure where to begin your journey, this podcast has the answer. Each episode sees host Alexis Ffrench (of Apple Music’s excellent Classical Connections show) interview a fan/expert of a particular genre who advocates for why you should listen to it and gives you suggestions of where to start on your journey. If you’ve ever wondered why people listen to Jazz, say, then this is a helpfully persuasive place to sate your curiosity.

I happen to be quite a fan of jazz, as I may have mentioned in previous newsletters. And long-time OneTrackMinds followers will also be aware of my enthusiasm for the work of sad singer-songwriter Elliott Smith (about whom I told my first OneTrackMinds story at Wiltons in 2017). So imagine my delight when I stumbled upon this record during my lunch break last week:

Ride Into The Sun is an album of Elliott Smith covers by esteemed Jazz pianist Brad Mehldau, and it’s every bit as lovely as I’d hoped it would be. So lovely, I’ve decided it can be our Album of the Week:

Right, that’ll do. We’ll be back again next week with more news from OneTrackMinds HQ. Until then,

KB.

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Next Show - October 23rd 2025 | Tickets Here

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