It’s Downtime, our regular series asking artists to share their cultural recommendations.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at him – babyface that he is – but Will Toledo has been releasing urgent, satisfyingly angsty alt-rock as Car Seat Headrest for a decade now. In that time he’s released 12 albums, including this year’s Making a Door Less Open, on which he dons a gas mask and boiler suit and adopts the name ‘Trait’. For Downtime, Toledo lowers the camouflage to recommend tomes on classical music, Kay Thompson, Miles Davis and more – though, he admits, he hasn’t finished reading them all himself yet.

The Oxford History of Western Music

The Oxford History of Western Music

By Richard Taruskin

I don’t know anything about classical music, but now I know a little bit thanks to these books. I’ve read Volume 2, The 17th and 18th Century, where classical music starts to be a “thing”, and now I’m reading Volume 3 on the 19th century. My favourite genre of classical music is opera now, although it’s not really a genre. An opera is like a movie, but better, because everyone is screaming about their feelings, but in a beautiful way. These books are big and expensive, but I got them through the library, so maybe try that.

Miles The Autobiography

Miles: The Autobiography

By Miles Davis and Quincy Troupe

I don’t know anything about jazz, but now I know a few jazz artists from the 40s, because that’s how far I’ve gotten in this book. It’s taking me a while because he mentions a lot of artists and I want to look them all up, but some of them barely exist online. This book is about a lost time when it was sexy to play the trumpet. It was probably the sexiest instrument back then. I still think it’s sexy, and so do probably a lot of people, but times have changed, and now everyone is going nuts over stuff like an “OP-1”. But I don’t care about synths. I just wish I knew how to play the trumpet.

Kay Thompson Sam Irvin

Kay Thompson: From Funny Face to Eloise

By Sam Irvin

I had no idea who Kay Thompson was, but now I know some of the things she did from 1909 to 1948, because that’s how far I’ve gotten in this book. She did a LOT of stuff, and she lived until 1998 according to the table of contents, so she probably does a lot more stuff from there. She mostly lived in Hollywood and did songs for movies, but all the songs were crazy elaborate productions, and she’d train the singers and coach the actors and then move right on to the next movie. She was just the kind of person who was always doing a thousand different things. In the part I just read she was touring with the Williams Brothers and everyone was going nuts over their show. The book flap says Andy Williams was her “secret lover” but I haven’t gotten to that point. If you’ve heard the Andy Williams Christmas Album, then you’ve heard Kay Thompson’s re-arrangement of Jingle Bells. It’s really nuts.

From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life

From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life

This isn’t a book about music. This is a history book written by an old smart guy. I tried to read this book years ago but it didn’t “click”. Now it’s “clicking” and the only thing stopping me from reading the whole thing is that my back is already hurting from too much reading, and it’s a heavy book and there’s no Kindle version. What are we doing here, people? I’m on page 96.

Making a Door Less Open is out now via Matador

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