The Sostenible - The week in audio: Laura Barton’s Notes on Music; The Crisis – review

Read Time:5 Minute, 48 Second

Laura Barton’s Notes on Music (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
The Crisis (Vice Audio)

On Tuesday last week, the third and final part of Laura Barton’s Notes on Music was broadcast on Radio 4. Entitled Laura Barton’s One True Love, it was about Bruce Springsteen. Or “Broohss”, as Barton had it, in her beautiful, intimate speaking voice. The way she said it, it sounded like a kiss.

Barton loves Springsteen. I do not, but her programme made me think I might: that’s the joy of how Barton writes and talks about music. She’s full of the romance of pop and rock’n’roll, their potent promise; the way a voice or a song – or just a cadence – can seem to understand you, send you on a journey, solve your life’s problems. And in her short series she’s unpicked three elements of her personal pop romance.

The first episode, Seventeen, examined music’s obsession with that age. Barton spoke to journalist David Hepworth, founder editor of Just Seventeen magazine, and musicians Janis Ian and Sharon Van Etten, who’ve written songs about being 17. Their insights were interwoven with archive interviews with other middle-aged 17-ers, such as Stevie “Edge of Seventeen” Nicks, who pointed out that musicians like 17 partly because “seventeen scans well, it’s got extra syllables”. Plus, lots of wonderful songs.

Barton’s essay on what she remembered about being that age, its almost-adult power, was as delightful as you’d expect, and she drew some great insights from her interviewees. (Hepworth: “You’re playing at an adult life, with live ammunition.”) There were many voices, too, who weren’t introduced immediately: weirdly, it reminded me of being that age, of listening to people speak but not fully understanding the context, not having the experience to know exactly what they were talking about. Trying to understand something just out of reach.

The next two episodes, about Happy Sad songs and good old Bruce, were just as lovely. The Bruce one was the most straightforward, an uncomplicated love letter from Barton and her Springsteen-mad interviewees. The production, by Alan Hall of Falling Tree, was exceptional throughout, taking interviews and music and weaving them into something far less linear and prosaic than the usual music show. This, along with Barton’s words, made these programmes a kind of music in themselves – emotional audio pieces releasing forgotten or misunderstood feelings. It’s amazing how that can happen.

A new podcast that’s also trying to push its audio boundaries is The Crisis, from Vice documentaries, released in full last week. At first listen it’s a true-crime series, focusing on the murder of three Colombian coal-mining union leaders more than 20 years ago. But it’s really about climate change. The idea is to engage listeners in the truth of environmental destruction by making an engaging whodunnit, rather than offering the usual whither-the-planet hand-wringing discussion.

An interesting idea, and there are other unusual aspects to The Crisis. It’s released in both English and Spanish, and the English version is not a direct translation of what you hear the Colombians say, but a summary, with the Spanish-speakers adding detail. (You can follow everything even if you don’t speak Spanish.) Second, the presenters change from episode to episode. Ramón Campos, a journalist who has written about the Colombian civil war for many years, reports from Colombia. Climate crisis reporter Agnes Walton hosts from the US.