While on holiday last week I finally picked up and read Elizabeth Goodman’s excellent “Meet Me In The Bathroom”. It’s an account of New York music in the early 2000s, documented in that peculiar format of quotes from individuals arrayed in narrative succession, once so beloved of Q magazine. As such, it’s super easy reading and warmly redolent of the heyday of UK music magazinery.

The book focuses mainly on four acts – The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem and Interpol. That said, it also focuses on a number of others who were either fellow travellers, inspirations or successors; the likes of Jonathan Fire*Eater, The White Stripes, The Rapture, Fischerspooner, TV On The Radio, The Hives, Franz Ferdinand, The Killers, Kings of Leon, etc.

It’s a highly enjoyable read, particularly for anyone who was young enough to be excited by at least some of these bands, or certainly anyone who is willing and able to recognise the particular greatness of The Strokes.

The turn of the millennium was obviously a time of great change for the music industry, which makes it fertile ground for a book of this type. It’s interesting to read about the flowering of » Continue Reading.