Basso Profundo

Aldous Huxley said, “After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” Will Boast poses his own challenge to Huxley’s dictum with “Power Ballads,” a very impressive series of short stories set in the personal and business world of music. The pieces here portray much that goes unexpressed, like one musician’s ambition pitted against another’s inadequacy; like a wife’s devotion to her touring musician husband even as she rebels against it; and like the unforgiving...