BOOK REVIEW

“The Summer We Crossed Europe In The Rain”

Lyrics for Stacey Kent by Kazuo Ishigoro, illustrated by Bianca Bagnarelli

(Faber & Faber)

The award winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro was born in Nagasaki, Japan in 1954 but moved to the UK with his parents at the age of five.

He has written eight full length novels, his best known work probably being 1989’s “The Remains of the Day”, which won the Booker Prize and was also the basis for a successful film (1993) and stage musical (2010).

Other notable novels include “An Artist of the Floating World” (1986), which won the Whitbread Book Prize and the acclaimed “Never Let Me Go” (2005), another literary work that was adapted for both cinema and television.

Something of a ‘Renaissance Man’ Ishiguro has also written short stories, screen plays and song lyrics. His all round talent resulted in him being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2017.

It’s Ishiguro’s work as a lyricist that concerns us here. “The Summer We Crossed Europe In The Rain”  gathers together the sixteen lyrics written to date by Ishiguro for the jazz singer Stacey Kent. The music for these songs is written by Kent’s husband, Jim Tomlinson, who acts as her musical director and plays saxophone, flute and numerous other instruments in her band.

Ishiguro’s lyrics feature on several of Kent’s albums, including “Breakfast on the Morning Tram” (2007), “Dreamer in Concert” (2011), “The Changing Lights” (2013), “I Know I Dream; The Orchestral Sessions” (2017), “Brazil” (2013), “Songs From Other Places (2021)” and “Summer Me, Winter Me” (2023). Of these “Summer Me, Winter Me” is reviewed elsewhere on The Jazzmann here;
https://www.thejazzmann.com/reviews/review/stacey-kent-summer-me-winter-me

Of course a collection of sixteen song lyrics would hardly constitute a book, so Ishiguro’s words are complemented by the visual images created by the Italian cartoonist and illustrator Bianca Bagnarelli.

Bagnarelli is the co-founder of Delebile, an independent publisher of comics and graphic novels. Her first comic volume “Fish”, published in 2014 won a gold medal from the Society of Illustrators of New York. Her other works include the illustrated short story “January 1st” (2013) and “Daughters (2017).

Bagnarelli’s work has appeared in numerous prestigious publications including the New Yorker, the New York Times and National Geographic.

The book commences with an introductory essay by Ishiguro that explains how he got into songwriting. Influenced by Leonard Cohen he wrote his first song at the age of fifteen. He is quick to inform us that the song in question,  “Shingles”,  was named for “the sort encountered beside the sea, not the painful skin affliction”.

By his twenties he had written over a hundred songs, which were, by his own admission, “mostly ghastly”. Nevertheless Ishiguro regards his songwriting attempts as a kind of apprenticeship for the literary career that he was to follow,  his early experiments with songwriting eventually leading to the writing of short stories and eventually full length novels.

He discusses his writing process and writes about the influence of popular song on his work as a prose writer, and particularly his desire to make a work resonate with the reader and for it to linger in their mind, even after the book itself has been finished.

He expresses his admiration for songwriters of the calibre of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Jimmy Webb, Robert Johnson, Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Gordon Lightfoot, Kris Kristofferson and, Antonio Carlos Jobim,  all of whom tell stories with their lyrics. He also delights in the folk music of Scotland and Ireland and their great story telling traditions.

Ishiguro also loves the ‘Great American Songbook’ composers such as Cole Porter, Hoagy Carmichael, George Gershwin and Rodgers & Hart. Arguably it’s this strand of songwriting that most informs his work with the jazz artists Stacey Kent and Jim Tomlinson.

One particularly salient point is that a successful and memorable song does not have to ‘make sense’ in the same way as a short story or a novel. Emotional sense can be conveyed by the music itself. “It occurs to me that good songs may haunt the mind not DESPITE their incompleteness but because of it” he concludes.

Ishiguro explains that he became a fan of Kent’s music in 1999 after hearing her 1998 album “The Tender Trap”. He subsequently purchased her catalogue to date and chose a Kent song when he appeared on Desert Island Discs in 2002. This led to a request from Kent’s record company for him to write the liner notes for her next album, an invitation that he readily accepted.

It was only at this point that Ishiguro actually met Kent and Tomlinson and a friendship was quickly established. It was when Kent signed with the famous Blue Note label that Kent and Tomlinson approached Ishiguro with a view to him writing lyrics for Kent to sing. Neither Kent or Tomlinson felt confident to write their own words, despite the sophistication of their musical ideas.

Kent had already comprehensively covered much of the ‘Great American Songbook’ repertoire but with a change of label she and Tomlinson were ambitious to do something different and to write more of their own material. In the wake of his youthful song writing efforts Ishiguro was delighted to be involved.

It was decided that the songs should be love songs, and despite that fact that Kent is American that they should be set in Europe, or even the Far East. Although inspired by the ‘Great American Songbook’ it was decided that the lyrics should not pastiche an earlier era and that the songs should be set in the present and contain contemporary cultural references. At Kent’s insistence the songs had to be less sad than some of Ishiguro’s novels, however bleak the lyrical imagery might become “there had to remain an element of hope”.

Kent’s 2007 album “Breakfast on the Morning Tram” featured two Ishiguro / Tomlinson collaborations, the title track and “The Ice Hotel”. Naturally both are included here, as is “The Summer We Crossed Europe In The Rain”, the song that gives this book its title and which appeared on Kent’s 2013 album “The Changing Lights”.

Mindful of the fact that song lyrics “separated from melody, orchestration and performance” do not always work in isolation on the printed page Ishiguro and his editors commissioned Bagnarelli to illustrate the lyrics, to “bring her own vision and dimension to each song”, as Ishiguro puts it.

The lyrics do not appear in the chronological order that they were presented on the albums, instead they are sequenced in a way that tells a kind of story.

Thus we start with the bittersweet “I Wish I Could Go Travelling Again”, followed by “The Changing Lights”, another tale that describes both the highs and lows of a love affair conducted in foreign locations. There are joyous memories, that element of hope, but one also senses that for the protagonist in both these songs that the romantic flame has died and that the relationship has ended.

As one would expect from a writer of Ishiguro’s quality the lyrics are genuinely poetic and rich in terms of evocative imagery. These find visual expression in Bagnarelli’s illustrations, which focus on specific phrases in the lyrics but also capture the overall atmosphere of the words.

That bittersweet feeling continues through the drily witty “How Romantic”, with “The Ice Hotel” representing the first totally positive lyric, the story of a love affair being conducted in the here and now.

There’s more heartbreak in “Breakfast on the Morning Tram”, but a sliver of hope too among the cinnamon pancakes and croissant and jam.

All of the lyrics convey a real sense of place with numerous locations name-checked – London, Paris, Rio, New York, with Bagnarelli’s illustrations making them seem even more real. “Craigie Burn”, a story of missed romantic opportunities takes us to the Scottish Highlands, with Bagnarelli’s images faithfully depicting the journey.

“The Summer We Crossed Europe In The Remain” is written from the point of view of a couple in a long term relationship attempting to recapture the joy and vitality of young love and that fondly remembered celebrated summer. “Let’s be young again, I only for the weekend, Let’s be fools again, Let’s fall in at the deep end”.

“Bullet Train” takes Ishiguro back to Japan while “Best Casablanca” nods to his long running fascination with cinema.

“Postcard Lovers” represents the only lyric that I have actually heard performed as a song. It appears on Kent’s “Summer Me, Winter Me” album.  This  tells the tale of two former lovers living very different lives, one travelling the world, the other stuck at home awaiting occasional missives from their old flame – “divided by the oceans and the years” as the lyrics put it. There’s still clearly some kind of affection there, no matter how dim the embers have become. That crucial “element of hope” still remains.

“Catherine in Indochine” is another homage to the cinema as it evokes a long lost era in the Far East.

The cinematic theme continues with “Gabin”, which references the actor Jean Gabin (1904-76), a leading figure in French cinema.

“Tango in Macao” is another visit to to the Far East and another distant era, while “Voyager” evokes the Golden Age of the Trans-Atlantic liners.

The humorous “Waiter, Oh Waiter” is written from the point of view of a diner confused by the language on a menu.

The collection ends with “Turning Noir”, a final homage to the cinema and the movies of the 1940s. The lyrics draw parallels with the protagonist’s own relationship and her associated doubts – “or are things turning noir?”.

Several of the lyrics are written from a female perspective, a necessity when the words are to be delivered by a female performer, but there’s the sense that Ishiguro’s lyrics would still work whatever the pronoun and whatever the gender of the singer.

I’m no art critic so I’m not going to attempt to describe Bagnarelli’s illustrations other than to say that they are highly evocative and bring Ishiguro’s words to vivid visual life. Both the words and the pictures are particularly adept at capturing the spirit of previous eras and depicting the apparent exoticism glamour of travel in times gone by. 

That said both lyricist and illustrator capture the nuances of modern day travel too in such items as “The Ice Hotel” and “Bullet Train”.

Nevertheless one still senses that as a songwriter Ishiguro is still under the influence of the ‘Great American Songbook’ composers, as of course are Kent and Tomlinson. It’s a very effective updating of a great tradition, viewed through the prism of nostalgia but also incorporating more contemporary references.

Bagnarelli’s illustrations, which are brilliantly realised, help to make this collection of words convincing as a book. There’s the sense that each of Ishiguro’s lyrics represents a short story distilled into the form of a song. His language is rich, colourful and evocative but also remarkably economical, creating a convincing atmosphere without being overly descriptive or overburdened by detail. Bagnarelli’s images, sourced from particularly evocative lyrical phrases, exhibit very similar qualities.

Of course the missing ingredient in this three way creative collaboration is the music itself. At the end of the book a QR code allows the reader to “listen on your preferred listening platform”.

I’m a bit of a dinosaur / technophobe so I haven’t actually done that, preferring to do my listening on old fashioned CD.  But others will no doubt be delighted by this opportunity and in that sense “The Summer We Crossed Europe In The Rain” represents a complete literary / visual / audio package.

As a book it’s a very attractive and charming package, but at £17.99 for the 100 page hardback a little on the expensive side. Compared to Ishiguro’s novels it’s a bit inconsequential but his fans, and no doubt those of Kent, will almost certainly appreciate it.  However Bagnarelli’s images are a revelation and will also linger long in the mind. This book represents my first encounter with her work and I was very impressed. Given the nature of this publication I’d like to see her images gracing album sleeves too.

Thanks to the Jazz Views website http://www.jazzviews.net for the following list matching Ishiguro’s lyrics to Stacey Kent’s recordings;

I wish I could go travelling again – (recorded twice): SONGS FROM OTHER PLACES + BREAKFAST ON THE MORNING TRAM

The Changing Lights – (recorded twice): THE CHANGING LIGHTS + I KNOW I DREAM: THE ORCHESTRAL SESSIONS

So Romantic – BREAKFAST ON THE MORNING TRAM

The Ice Hotel – (recorded twice): BREAKFAST ON THE MORNING TRAM + I KNOW I DREAM: THE ORCHESTRAL SESSIONS

Breakfast on the morning tram: BREAKFAST ON THE MORNING TRAM

Craigie Burn – SONGS FROM OTHER PLACES

The Summer We Crossed Europe in the Rain – THE CHANGING LIGHTS

Bullet Train – I KNOW I DREAM: THE ORCHESTRAL SESSIONS

Best Casablanca – Not yet recorded (next album)

Postcard Lovers: (recorded twice) SUMMER ME, WINTER ME + Live at La Cigale, DREAMER IN CONCERT

Catherine in Indochine – Not yet recorded (next album)

Gabin – Not yet recorded (next album)

Tango in Macau – SONGS FROM OTHER PLACES

Voyager – Not yet recorded (next album)

Waiter, oh Waiter – THE CHANGING LIGHTS

Turning Noir – Not yet recorded (next album)

Link to the songs;
https://bfan.link/the-summer-we-crossed-europe-in-the-rain

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