Marc Almond [Old Edition]: The Last Star

There's no point in writing about an artist's music at length unless you have real sympathy for the work. Dislike or ambivalence is better served in a half-dozen pithy pages. No question Jeremy Reed's full-length study of Marc Almond is half love-letter, but it is written by a lover who has lived long with and through his subject. Lovers see the beloved with a unique and peculiar clarity, and this is Reed's strength here. He brings you very close to his subject, but really much closer to the subjective experience of a profound and critical listener lovingly engaging over the years with Almond's diverse art. Almond's measure of musical genius has grown over the years in reverse proportion to the number of people willing to listen. He started as a star of limited ability and became a has-been of enormous power. Almond has been brave, exploring many musical avenues with rare emotional honesty, making the myriad boulevards of sound glitter. Reed is at least as brave and at least as gifted. His poetry, literary and music criticism is as great as Almond's music; would that more people paid serious attention to both. This book is a fine introduction to Marc Almond, and to Jeremy Reed as well.

It's great to read a well written biography and artistic examination of such a multi faceted performer/songwriter/genius. Reed writes with such beauty it's almost like reading Almond's lyrics and poetry itself. Also recommended for it's exhaustive discography and the beautiful photographs of the hero of the piece. This should compliment the imminent release of Almond's autobiography "Tainted Love".