RaveThe NationIntricately probing ... Powers has a sharp eye for detail and a lyric-lover’s appreciation for concision ... Smart, exquisitely crafted.
Bob Dylan
MixedThe AtlanticThe nature, the mechanics, and the meaning of creativity, especially as it pertains to music, matter a lot to him, as he makes abundantly clear with his new book, The Philosophy of Modern Song. A collection of short essays, lyrical riffs, chunks of facts, and unpredictable digressions, generously illustrated with historical photos suitable for enjoyment at the coffee table ... It’s a work of authorship, obviously, and at the same time a critique of, and a bit of a prank on, the idea of authorship too ... Dylan begins some chapters with a looping, free-form narrative, spinning an imaginative tale connected in some way to the idea or theme of the song ... These sections are certainly the most overtly literary parts of The Philosophy of Modern Song, and the literature they conjure is the racy pulp of bus-depot book racks in mid-century America ... From the selection of songs and singers, one could conclude that Dylan has little interest in women as creative artists ... When he does discuss women, Dylan often depicts them as dark temptresses and shrews ... Dylan’s refusal to acknowledge the depth of women’s contributions to American song is indefensible ... We see, too, that Dylan thinks very little of hip-hop—or, more likely, that he doesn’t think about it at all ... We can only take what pleasure there is in it and marvel at the author’s unfading ability to test the meaning of authorship and make the work his own.
Maria Golia
RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewGolia serves her subject fittingly by taking a nontraditional approach, applying the concept of territory to Coleman’s time on earth ... an atlas in prose, a guide to the territories of varied sorts—social, racial, aesthetic, economic and even geographic—that Coleman came out of, traveled through, lived near, occupied, left behind or transformed ... Golia, who once ran a performing arts center in Fort Worth, handles the area’s complex history deftly ... She covers the territory of the Texas blues with acuity ... Golia covers a lot of territory in tight, direct language that illuminates Ornette Coleman’s life and work without emulating its fire and originality. She’s strong on the impact of women in Coleman’s career ... Most impressively, perhaps, she devotes a sizable section to Coleman’s cryptic and elliptical philosophy of music, which he called Harmolodics, without straining to defend it with academic triple-talk or dismissing it. Obviously enamored with her subject, Golia avoids matters that might not reflect as well on him, such as his various fallow periods or the quality of his violin playing and his painting. But that comes with the territory.
Dylan Jones
MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewThe dynamics between the real and the imagined, facts and artifice, the 'true' self and performance — the great themes of David Bowie’s work — provide the otherwise scattershot materials of David Bowie: A Life with a semblance of continuity ... A welcome surprise of David Bowie: A Life is its strength on the essential subject of music making. There are multiple accounts of the speed and professionalism of Bowie’s work in the recording studio, and an illuminating explanation of his cut-and-paste method of writing lyrics — a system for sustaining the elusiveness at the heart of Bowie’s songs that has something in common with the way this fragmentary, disjointed oral history is constructed. As biography, this Life is an imperfect one. It’s erratic, at once bloated and too thin, and sometimes hard to parse, with passing references to names and events that could use a bit of explanation. That is to say, it suits its subject perfectly.
