Band Books: Bookshop Band at Jura Unbound

The Bookshop Band makes a very welcome return to Jura Unbound after the success of their 2013 debut. Once more they are set to beguile and charm with their own unique brand of words and music. Not only are Poppy Pitt, Beth Porter and Ben Please ridiculously multi-talented musicians but they also have the incredibly unnerving ability to take a novel and distil it into a delicately crafted four minute song.

Since forming in 2010 and first performing at Mr B’s Emporium of Reading in Bath, they have recorded an impressive seven albums and toured the country’s bookshops and festivals sharing their sounds. No novel is too daunting, no book too big, no genre too intimidating. Authors like Hilary Mantel, China Miéville, Andrey Kurkov, Armistead Maupin and Eleanor Catton have all fallen under The Bookshop Band’s musical scalpel to be delightfully dissected and musically reborn. Last year they even managed to persuade Ian Rankin to introduce his own song.

This year they promise to create another literary kaleidoscope of words and music in the Book Festival’s Guardian Spiegeltent drawing on their extensive back catalogue and performing new songs, reflecting new work and linking into the World War One anniversary. Alongside the music there will be readings from Kate Mosse whose short story collection The Mistletoe Bride has had three stories transformed and performed, and Ned Beauman whose novel The Teleportation Accident has been the subject of two songs and whose brand new story, Glow, will inspire a new song.

If you are suffering from the noise, clutter and intensity of Edinburgh in August, a night in the company of The Bookshop Band will revive your sagging spirits and have you returning to your bookshelves for that book that’s slipped your mind.