The long-player goodbye - Travis Elborough

For 60 years the way our music has been presented to us has been in the form of the LP, the album: 12-odd tracks representing something much more than the sum of their parts. But if we can download a single track, is the album going to go the way of the old 78 and be consigned to the dustbin of history?

Travis Elborough, who has a deep love for music and albums takes a fond, nostalgic, entertaining and informative tour through the history of the album, from its revolutionary arrival on the global scene in 1948, when it entirely transformed the way music was listened to and produced, to its revered position as the creative benchmark to which all musicians aspire.

Travis has the most astonishing amount of material at his fingertips on career-ending LPs, record-company bankrupting LPs, never-released LPs, difficult third albums, career fillers, contractual copouts, duff tracks, ill-advised solo projects and comeback LPs. He brilliantly places the revered albums of history in their social context, using the album to examine some of the enormous changes in our society, looking at education, work, wages, race and sexuality, leisure and shopping, teenagers and boredom. He also examines the meaning of the current vinyl revival.

This is a book filled with enough detail and idiosyncrasy to satisfy the obsessive but with an entirely unelitist, inclusive insight into how music has shaped our lives and our lives have shaped music.