Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening

In this humdrum collection, New York Times jazz critic Ratliff (Every Song Ever) meditates on listening to music while on his jogs around Van Cortlandt Park near his home in the Bronx. One entry recounts how listening to Charlie Parker’s committed if imperfect performance on “Lover Man,” recorded while the saxophonist was going through heroin withdrawal, steeled Ratliff’s resolve to keep running while recovering from a foot injury, and another compares his winding route through the neighborhood of Kingsbridge to the “circular” movements of composer Sofia Gubaidulina’s first string quartet. The author offers plenty of astute observations on an eclectic variety of musicians, but his conclusions are largely uninteresting. For instance, Ratliff suggests that post-punk band Dry Cleaning’s practice of making front woman Florence Shaw’s whispered vocals unnaturally loud in the mix above the raucous instrumentals creates the impression of an artificial, impossible “space,” only for him to opine that he finds the effect unpleasantly incongruous while running. Other claims feel nebulous, as when he contends that running while listening helps him “engage with the music’s forward patterns” and “discern the way music operates in space and time.” These meandering musings struggle to find the beat. Agent: Zoë Pagnamenta, Calligraph. (Mar.)