RaveVarietyThe Philosophy of Modern Song is going to be rife with hot takes ... He is as much of a historian, and more-than-decent rock critic, as he fancies himself — this is absolutely one of the best books about popular music ever written. But the book’s best passages...come when he puts himself inside the minds of the songs’ protagonists ... Some readers will find cause for disappointment or disdain in what Dylan doesn’t include in the book: many songs by female writers or performers ... These things could indeed be counted drawbacks if Dylan were a journalist, one who’d be beholden to representation, rather than a subjective student of pop, blues, country, soul and rock who believes not every age is a golden one ... So many chapters, so many odd, wonderful choices.
Brandi Carlile
RaveVarietyWith Sir Elton and Bernie Taupin likely having the biggest historic impact on her songwriting, it might not be a leap to imagine that the cheeky humor and conversational style of Me had at least a slight influence on the wry laugh lines that pop up with just a little less regularity in her tome, too ... Carlile is that rare pop or rock star gifted with complete self-consciousness and confidence but also the soulful clairvoyance to read a room… even a really, really big, global room ... playing up the high-minded (or Highwoman-minded) aspects of her life and career risks undercutting what a fun and sometimes irreverent read Broken Horses is. As a prose writer, Carlile has an ongoing playfulness that emanates naturally from a life that always has seemed full of play, whatever emotional traumas she might have been going through ... Carlile’s life seems about equal parts hardscrabble and charmed, so when the Cinderella moments come —becoming a BFF at Joni Mitchell’s in the last couple years being one of them — she’s still continents away from anything the reader will experience as entitlement ... Even for any potential reader whose eyes might glaze over at the thought of social issues, there’s plenty to chew on in Broken Horses just as a show-biz memoir ... The final chapters could risk being too \'We Are the Champions\'-level triumphant, but this Cinderella really likes to get her knees dirty with tasks like advanced carpentry and forestry, after the ball ... The cherry on top of her story is that she’s not just figuratively blazing trails.
Saul Austerlitz
PositiveThe San Francisco ChronicleFor anyone who wants to be reminded that rock ’n’ roll has always had a dystopian element, Altamont is never more than a shot away—\'Altamont,\' of course, being not just the name of a long-vacant speedway in Northern California but also shorthand for the end of the ’60s, the death of the counterculture and the ultimate correction to Woodstock idealism. That’s a lot of weight for one disastrous concert to cover, but Saul Austerlitz’s recounting re-establishes that the Dec. 6, 1969, show headlined by the Rolling Stones is still just about up to the sorry task ... And Austerlitz makes one other passionate choice that readers may find either rewarding or risible — or both. Because of the stabbing death that day of Meredith Hunter, a black teenager, Austerlitz has determined that Altamont is at its heart a precursor to modern tales of violent racial injustice like that of Trayvon Martin.
