Utopia Avenue

Utopia avenue is like an endless piece of prog rock noodling fine if you re stoned in the late 60s but painfully out of place in the here and now.

Utopia avenue. An avenue originally meant the act of approaching or arrival in military terms. The novel tells the story of the fictional 1960s british rock band utopia avenue. D avid mitchell s eighth novel utopia avenue arrives both as a distinct and distinctive book and as a further chapter in the ongoing metanovel that constitutes his work to date at first. Its members jasper elf dean and griff are thrown together by manager levon frankland a canadian whose furtive and complicated love life is a little reminiscent of beatles manager brian epstein s.

Utopia is the ideal state and it does not exist. Utopia avenue is a 2020 novel by david mitchell it is his eighth published novel and his first since slade house 2015. What emerges is the band utopia avenue playing an eclectic blend of folk jazz r b and psychedelia. It was published by sceptre on july 14 2020.

The band utopia avenue is titled after a group that plays an eclectic blend of folk r b psychedelia and jazz consists of bass player and singer dean moss a cockney intoxicated by the act. Emerging from london s psychedelic scene in 1967 and fronted by folk singer elf holloway blues bassist dean moss and guitar virtuoso jasper de zoet utopia avenue embark on a meteoric journey from the seedy clubs of soho a tv debut on top of the pops the cusp of chart success glory in amsterdam prison in rome and a. There s gene clark of the byrds for example who admires a guitar. Manager levon frankland think beatles manager brian epstein brings together four musicians of different backgrounds and musical influences.

Utopia avenue is a psychedelic folk rock band attempting to make a mark on the music scene of the late sixties. The usual stuff of rock dramas the ego clashes the drugs the hangers on and record company parasites is all there but mitchell who wasn t born when utopia avenue s putative first album was released knows exactly which real life musicians to seed into the story. In its english iteration it has connotations of. Utopia avenue by the british master of intricate literary puzzles features a band on the make lots of inside jokes and references to the author s previous works.