“Utopia Avenue” is a paradox, a contradictory phrase containing a place that does not exist and a road that does. It’s the perfect name for the fabulous quartet that make up the greatest fictional, genre-defying, late 1960s-era, British band ever; and also the title to a surreal book penned by a British author known for his genre-defying meta postmodern works like the magnum opus “Cloud Atlas.”
In “Utopia Avenue” — the coda to “Cloud Atlas” (2004), “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet” (2011) and “The Bone Clocks” (2014), David Mitchell chronicles the formation and meteoric rise of an eclectic “schizophrenic” band (Is it folk? Or R&B? Or psychedelic rock ‘n’ roll? Or jazz? Or pop?) that can count Pink Floyd, Cream, Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Bob Dylan and the Beatles among their contemporaries, but whom no one has ever heard of until now.
At the helm is Canadian manager Levon Frankland, who cobbled the group together from pieces of different puzzles.
His first recruit: the talented bassist/singer/songwriter Dean Moss, the band’s 23-year-old pretty boy heartthrob from Gravesend (where “The Bone Clocks” was set), who — in the course of 24 hours and the first chapter of this novel — gets mugged, evicted, fired, and told that his greatest dream may come true after he meets and plays with future Utopia Avenue bandmates: former jazz drummer Peter “Griff” Griffin and esoteric Dutch guitar god/singer/songwriter Jasper de Zoet. (Yes, Jasper’s a direct and illegitimate descendant to that de Zoet; his great-great-great grandfather, Jacob, was the titular character of an earlier David Mitchell book, “The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.”)
Levon’s last recruit: folk singer/pianist/songwriter prodigy Elf (short for Elizabeth Frances) Holloway — the future trans-Atlantic penpal to “Cloud Atlas’s” Luisa Rey. Elf finds out her boyfriend cheated on her and her sister’s engaged on the same day she meets the boys of Utopia Avenue.
“Utopia Avenue”
By David Mitchell
592 pp. Random House. $30
July 14, 2020.
“Utopia Avenue” is the answer to how to write and where ideas come from. Sometimes they’re semi-quasi-autobiographical, says Elf. Sometimes they write themselves, says Jasper and Dean. Always they’re anchored by a pretty great percussionist and bettered, sharpened and tuned by each other’s criticisms.
Between Dean, Jasper and Elf, Utopia Avenue writes more than two dozen songs compiled in three glorious albums, describing the death of dreams, dead babies, abusive alcoholic fathers, living with schizophrenia, fame, addiction, borrowed time, love, war, apologies, freedom, acid trips, hellhounds, heartbreak and fate. Each chapter, distinctly different in voice as the song’s writers, comes from song titles and describes the song’s birth.
The band’s first radio single “Darkroom,” penned by Jasper, was inspired by a girl and a lost recording by “Cloud Atlas’s” Robert Frobisher. Dean’s “Roll Away the Stone” was written after Dean was detained in an Italian prison. Elf’s “Prove It” was her rebuttal and account of when her cheater boyfriend stole one of her songs and sold it for money. You think each song and chapter is your favorite only until you hear the next track.
But Utopia Avenue is a paradox — an ageless band you can’t really listen to. So you compile a playlist of those who advised, partied and inspired Utopia Avenue, and wish it into being, imagining the records of Utopia Avenue spinning over and over in our axis.
David Mitchell’s “Utopia Avenue” will be published on July 14, 2020. I received a free eARC of “Utopia Avenue” from NetGalley and Random House in exchange for this honest review.
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