Expression In Pop-Rock Music: A Collection of Critical and Analytical Essays.(Review)

Edited by Walter Everett. (Studies in Contemporary Music and Culture, 2.) New York: Garland Publishing, 2000. (xii, 372 p. ISBN 0- 8153-3160-6. $75.)

This book is a welcome addition to the growing literature of popular-music analysis, both in its diversity and in its focus on the musical text. From the title alone, its purpose is decidedly ambitious. For the most part, the focus is on method and analytical technique, with the intention to concentrate on the listener's imagination and "sense of craft." Yet one is often left wondering who exactly the listener is: the fan or the traditional music scholar? I suspect the latter.

The collection comprises ten essays by North American scholars, each dealing with issues concerning the analysis of poprock music drawn from the second half of the twentieth century. The authors, presenting their interpretations of specific examples, are grouped into subject-related pairs. Nadine Hubbs and Walter Everett flank the book with the first and last chapters respectively.

Kicking off the general debate surrounding the problematics of popular-music research, Hubbs sets out to reexamine existing analytical methods by calling for a general "retooling" that might permit one "to examine performative and sociocultural elements beside and commingling with the music" (p. 5). In her analysis of "Exit Music" from Radiohead's OK Computer, she insists that her discussion assumes no prior or specialized knowledge of Schenker's techniques of voice-leading analysis" (p. 19). The analytical objective is to position the critical imagination of the musicologist within a psychological discourse that opens up a holistic approach to the field. For Hubbs, holism in interpretation circumvents the musicology/sociology binarism by addressing the priorities of music through critical thought.

A number of the ideas raised by Hubbs are picked up by Susan Fast in chapter 2, "Music, Contexts, and Meaning in U2." Fast sets out to examine the music of U2 by treating style as a semantically rich discourse, framing her decoding of musical features alongside the problematic questions of context. Her foregrounding of technology in U2's "Zoo Station," from Achtung Baby, is particularly useful in positioning a detailed account of the music--context congruity in U2. In chapter 3, Ellie M. Hisama's analysis of "Killing an Arab" by the Cure posits a reflective reading that embraces the song's source in Albert Camus's L'etranger. While there might have been more explication of analytical method, the strength of Hisama's contribution undoubtedly lies in its political interpretation.

In the section "Style Studies in Progressive Rock and Jazz-Rock Fusion," Mark S. Spicer and John Covach each explore qualities of compositional design and stylistic crossover. Covach's chapter adumbrates a well-argued debate that tackles the question of stylistic crossover in progressive rock. He adopts an approach that is engagingly erudite, extracting features of stylistic identification in his analyses of "prog" rock and jazz-rock in the American groups Happy the Man and the Dixie Dregs. Asserting that crossover occurs in both of these bands because of a culture that has privileged instrumental virtuosity, Covach draws on a dichotomous model of stylistic and marketing crossover to persuade the reader that the "fascination of most crossover music is how it balances between two styles [by] refusing to be forced into a single stylistic category" (p. 129). In a similar vein, Spicer's extended reading of "Supper's Ready" from the Genesis album Foxtrot concentrates on motivic, harmonic, and melodic coherence as deeper levels of compositional design. Given that Spicer's intentions are to elucidate the "elaborate web of intertextual references" (p. 102), his focus here, at times, falls short of sufficient critical inquiry.

In the next section ("Frank Zappa's Recompositions"), James Borders's chapter, "'The Black Page': A Case of Musical 'Conceptual Continuity,'" offers an extended discussion of the gap between the closed work's notated versions and its recordings and live performances. Drawing on Theodore Gracyk's studies in rhythm, Borders considers how repeated listenings to rock songs and albums have an important bearing upon our perceptions of form. Tracing the transformation of "Black Page" over successive versions, his inquiry into formal organization and (re)compositional intentionality is enlightening. We learn how Zappa's musical idiosyncrasy and expressive power can be mapped against questions of identity. In his essay "The Musical World(s?) of Frank Zappa: Some Observations of His 'Crossover' Pieces," Jonathan W. Bernard ...