The Albion Beatnik Bookstore website (or how to change a light bulb in a tight space on a ladder)

The web page of the Albion Beatnik Bookstore, based once in Oxford, then Sibiu, always neo-bankrupt, now closed for business: atavistic and very analogue, its musings and misspells on books and stuff.

Category Archives: songwriting

Fink Looking Too Closely

I saw Fink perform live in Bucharest the other week, as one does. I love his guitar work, his vocal inflections (heightened white man’s blues), his post-John Martyn sobriety. The … Continue reading

28th November 2017 · Leave a comment

She’s Leaving Home

She’s Leaving Home, a sublime and yet sorrowful song, is one of the more unusual in the Beatles’ catalogue. Like Eleanor Rigby from the earlier Revolver LP it did not include any band … Continue reading

13th September 2016 · Leave a comment

Father & Son

Compared to the likes of Bob Dylan, Carole King, Billy Joel and many other Americans – whose lyrics followed dramatically the contours of the melody and effortlessly displayed an emotional … Continue reading

15th February 2016 · Leave a comment

Maybe I’m Amazed

Here is the finest of Paul McCartney’s songs, the highlight of the album released to announce formally the break-up of the Beatles, the eponymous McCartney, the song of course being Maybe I’m Amazed; … Continue reading

15th November 2015 · Leave a comment

Bernard O’Donoghue’s Connolly’s Bookshop

Barbara Pym’s Excellent Women