Every piece...is powerfully written, wittily observed and unafraid to argue. Taken individually...and as a whole, they make an airtight case for why the professional critic still matters, and why it is a thrill to spend time in the presence of someone whose job it is to care so much and so intelligently. Like the best critics—Pauline Kael, Susan Sontag—Hopper is gifted at balancing the macro and the micro, identifying a pattern and helping the reader appreciate its scope and significance, while peppering in details that make the writing electrifying on the sentence level.

Liking something doesn’t mean it’s good, those are two different things, and a good critic can dislike something...while also pointing out that it is well made and works on its own terms. This balance is not hard to maintain as long as one starts from a point of self-awareness and is transparent to the reader, but the kind of passions that music inflame work against those habits. Jessica Hopper misses that balance often enough in this collection that there’s a two-steps-forward, one-back feeling to reading through it. But that just means there are things to argue over with this book, which makes it worth reading.

... Hopper lays bare a storied career and a true gift for music journalism.

As a critic, she brings a perspective that shouldn't be fresh but is, discussing both the old and the new with an intelligence and intensity that can only come from a true music geek. Her Gen-X frame of reference ranges from Eighties alternative rock and grunge through to the present, touching on pop, freak folk, and even Christian rock. Particularly powerful are pieces on indie rocker David Bazan and record producer/rapper R. Kelly.

... the author convincingly argues that staying silent on...inequities has consequences.

... hits just as hard [as the previous edition].