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4.34 AVERAGE
4.34 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
“the miracle of music, of all creativity, is making something from nothing.”
this is such a brilliantly written and honest memoir. miki berenyi has a natural gift for storytelling, plus i adore lush so this was perfect. funny how her music career was more of a side effect of time and place than anything else. a lot of it was based around her childhood and personal life leading up to the formation of the band but i actually found that part more interesting.
this is such a brilliantly written and honest memoir. miki berenyi has a natural gift for storytelling, plus i adore lush so this was perfect. funny how her music career was more of a side effect of time and place than anything else. a lot of it was based around her childhood and personal life leading up to the formation of the band but i actually found that part more interesting.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Trying to think of a more glowing endorsement than “It’s literally 150 pages into this thing before she even picks up a damn guitar but I was transfixed the whole time,” and coming up short.
I love Lush. I love Miki's voice. I love Miki's red hair. So, I figured I'd get around to this eventually, but what I didn't expect was one of the best written and most honest memoirs I've ever read. Starting from her childhood and going right up until the breakup of Lush, no punches were pulled in this book. I loved reading about their time on the Lollapalooza tour, the skeezy behavior of some of the male musicians and music industry people (no surprise there), and just the general relationship between Emma and Miki. Surprisingly lovable book all around.
easily one of the greatest auto-bios i've ever read. berenyi has a natural gift for storytelling, and her shrewd writing style is equal parts vibrant, intricate, penetrating and comforting.
i could NOT put this book down.
i could NOT put this book down.
I wasn’t going to bother reading this as I was never a Lush fan but my husband enjoyed it so much I thought I’d give it a go. I am so happy I did, Miki writes in such an honest and self aware way, I felt like I was sat on the sofa with a mate over a bottle of wine whilst she told me her life story. Trigger warning - there are some pretty horrifying abuse stories but they are dealt with in Miki’s very matter of fact way, none of the “misery memoir” lurid details that often come hand in hand with this kind of story. Read it, you’ll be angry, sad, laugh your tits off and rage against the patriarchal bullshit that is the music industry alongside her. Thanks Miki.
Since it came on the scene, I have been an unapologetic shoegaze fan. When I discovered Lush in 1990, I knew I had a band that could very easily soundtrack my life. Through the years, I watched the band thrive, break up, deal with crisis, and then excel at other projects. At the core of all of that was Miki Berenyi with her haunting voice and shock of candy red hair. When I discovered she was working on a memoir I could not wait to get my grubby little paws on it.
First and foremost, this is a super personal story, and full of a lot more damage than the fans probably knew well. Ms. Berenyi is amazingly brave to put her life out there because a lot of it is just not easy to read. As an American, I thought I knew what was going on in that era of “my” music in the UK, but I knew absolutely nothing of the machinations that were going on behind the scenes.
Ms. Berenyi speaks at length about her tumultuous childhood, and the very complicated relationship she had with each of her parents — particularly her father — and the horror that her paternal grandmother was.
One thing I absolutely loved is that this book frames the development of Ms. Berenyi’s musical career and how it was mostly an unplanned side effect of time and place. The insights into their process as a band, and the inter-band relationships, really floored me, and the discomfort of the process, the perception, and, most importantly, the marketing of Lush was a real eye-opener.
I could go on and on about the interesting happenstances, and the balance between planning and sheer luck, but I really feel like that would detract from the story from the proverbial horse’s mouth.
I’m not a biography/memoir fan, but there are certain exceptions from extraordinary people that I just can’t ignore. If you were aware of the 90’s music scene in the UK, you definitely owe it to yourself to pick up this very genuine, and very raw, insight into a woman who was navigating the inside of the entire thing.
First and foremost, this is a super personal story, and full of a lot more damage than the fans probably knew well. Ms. Berenyi is amazingly brave to put her life out there because a lot of it is just not easy to read. As an American, I thought I knew what was going on in that era of “my” music in the UK, but I knew absolutely nothing of the machinations that were going on behind the scenes.
Ms. Berenyi speaks at length about her tumultuous childhood, and the very complicated relationship she had with each of her parents — particularly her father — and the horror that her paternal grandmother was.
One thing I absolutely loved is that this book frames the development of Ms. Berenyi’s musical career and how it was mostly an unplanned side effect of time and place. The insights into their process as a band, and the inter-band relationships, really floored me, and the discomfort of the process, the perception, and, most importantly, the marketing of Lush was a real eye-opener.
I could go on and on about the interesting happenstances, and the balance between planning and sheer luck, but I really feel like that would detract from the story from the proverbial horse’s mouth.
I’m not a biography/memoir fan, but there are certain exceptions from extraordinary people that I just can’t ignore. If you were aware of the 90’s music scene in the UK, you definitely owe it to yourself to pick up this very genuine, and very raw, insight into a woman who was navigating the inside of the entire thing.
I have very fond memories of Lush. As an Indie music kid of the late Eighties and Nineties, their music was the soundtrack to a lot of very excellent nights out. Berenyi's memoir walks a brilliant line between evoking those heady days and the enjoyment of the music scene, both as a musician herself and as a music fan. She also tells her own, far darker and sadder tale as the background to all of this and how it at first broke and then shaped her.
It's not an easy read, despite the fact that Berenyi can write beautifully. What she went through is frankly jaw dropping, but here she is, still making music and having built herself what appears to be a rich, rewarding life out of the wreckage. I don't often use the word gripping when I'm writing about memoirs, but I'd use it here.
It's not an easy read, despite the fact that Berenyi can write beautifully. What she went through is frankly jaw dropping, but here she is, still making music and having built herself what appears to be a rich, rewarding life out of the wreckage. I don't often use the word gripping when I'm writing about memoirs, but I'd use it here.
medium-paced