Permanent record
The 331/3 series serves up books of vinyl love.

By Jimmy Draper

'WRITING ABOUT MUSIC is like dancing about architecture," Elvis Costello, seemingly resistant to discussion and criticism of his own or anyone else's music, once famously bitched. "It's a really stupid thing to want to do."

David Barker, of course, would beg to differ. As commissioning editor at publishing house Continuum, Barker wanted to provide writers with an opportunity to delve into the historical, musical, and personal importance of a favorite album. So last fall he began the 331/3 series, a collection of tomes – which, at roughly 120 pocket-size pages each, are miniature in scale – by critics, musicians, and scholars who believe music, like all art, can inspire dialogue and analysis capable of capturing the essence of its subject. And indeed, several of the series' authors possess the sort of insight and eloquence that'd make Costello eat his words.

Much of what makes 331/3 so not stupid is Barker's decision to seek authors who aren't necessarily interested in the usual suspects. Of the 11 available and 17 forthcoming volumes, less than half tackle overanalyzed albums listed in Rolling Stone's canon-defining top 100 greatest albums of all time (i.e., the Beatles' Let It Be, the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds). The rest of the series finds writers veering off the beaten music-critic path, focusing on less obvious albums by established artists or albums by historically underappreciated, commercially ignored, or marginalized acts such as Abba, Neutral Milk Hotel, and De La Soul. If that doesn't offer an idea of the series' variety, consider that books on James Brown's Live at the Apollo, My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, and Jethro Tull's Aqualung are all due in August.

Such a wide subject range calls for a multitude of approaches, of course, and Barker allows the authors to write about the albums in whatever way they see fit. The results may not always be successful, but they nonetheless provide a much-needed reprieve from the bite-size, Blender-style capsule reviews that rule much of today's music criticism.

Warren Zanes, for instance, begins his book on Dusty Springfield's Dusty in Memphis with a disclaimer. "This is not a book about a record," he writes. "This is a book about an experience with a record more than it is about a record." And though his neglect of the actual music may frustrate, his particular approach (at least theoretically) seems befitting of such an intensely personal album.

Some contributors, like Andy Miller and John Perry – covering The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society and Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, respectively – offer more conventional history lessons. Joe Pernice, on the other hand, simply uses the Smiths' Meat Is Murder as the jumping-off point for a novella. By turns engaging and maddening, such varied stylistic methods – not to mention the authors' song analyses, lyrical interpretations, and value judgments – are sure to inspire their fair share of heated fan debates.

As should the series itself. Despite its refreshing refusal to cover exclusively canonical works, 331/3 still mirrors much of what's troubling about the current state of music criticism. It remains, for instance, one serious sausage fest: of the 28 books, a mere three are dedicated to albums credited to women, while the same number of authors lack Y chromosomes. Racial and genre breakdowns are similarly disappointing.

Still, given that it's one of the only forums for writers to elaborate on their musical passions, it'd be a mistake to simply dismiss 331/3 because white rock-centrism dominates. Demographics can be improved, and if Continuum wants to cultivate a series that's truly representative of "critically acclaimed and much-loved albums of the past 40 years," Barker should be far more inclusive not only of gender but also of genres such as rap, hip-hop, pop, country, and electronic music. Here's hoping, then, that future publications tackle albums by the likes of Nina Simone, Dolly Parton, Mary J. Blige or, hell, if it means one less volume on the Beatles, even that ol' crank Costello.

'Abba Gold,' by Elisabeth Vincentelli In 331/3's sole tome dedicated to an Euro-pop album, Elisabeth Vincentelli doesn't embrace Abba ironically; rather, she shows that a group largely dismissed as fluff can still have depth. " 'SOS' is not only my favorite Abba song," she writes, "it is my favorite song of all time, encapsulating everything that makes pop glorious, everything that makes life worth living." And it's this infectious enthusiasm that makes her book worth reading: throughout her meticulously researched, song-by-song exploration of Abba's most famous moments, Vincentelli – senior editor at Time Out New York, where, I should disclose, she edited me for two years – examines with insight, wit, and unabashed fanaticism everything from "Knowing Me, Knowing You" 's domestic drama to, well, the shoulder pads, tights, and foil shirts worn in the "Voulez-Vous" video. ("Abba's idea of club gear remains unique," she quips.) In the process, she not only makes a compelling, sincere case for all things Abba but also for pop music itself. (J.D.)

'Sign o' the Times,' by Michaelangelo Matos There are certainly easier Prince cornerstones to tackle than Sign o' the Times; 1999 and Purple Rain, debatably better albums with more subtext than the 1987 issue, have, however, already received mountains of coverage over the years. Refreshingly, Michaelangelo Matos's gift is to confound his readers, forcing them to rethink '80s pop politics without getting overly political. To that end, Sign is a profound unearthing of the decade's irony – its unwitting reflection on the '60s; how Sign, despite its reliance on electronics, turned Prince into a rock star – and an examination of pop as art.

Whereas most of us had an older sibling as a musical mentor, Matos had his mom. And she proves to be a consciously cool influence on her son, only 15 years her junior, as she chastises him for wanting Billy Crystal's Mahvelous! with a terse "Get a real album." But as much as Matos contextualizes Sign in his poor Minneapolis upbringing, the book still provides criticism, bending from the album's initial clumsiness to its later-discovered flow. Matos critiques from two standpoints – the 13-year-old kid and the 29-year-old Rolling Stone contributor and Seattle Weekly editor – with a pure love for Sign and for pop music in general. Rather than becoming an energy-draining exegesis, his exploration breathes unexpected life into the record. It's inspired me to drop into Amoeba Music and retaste Sign too. (Ken Taylor)

'Meat Is Murder,' by Joe Pernice By writing a work of fiction – the black sheep of Contiuum's 331/3 series, according to the author's note – Joe Pernice leaves the needs of the book's main audience (Smiths' fans and literary indie rockers) unsatisfied. Instead of describing the album's personal importance and charm, Pernice gives us a familiarly banal depiction of suburban angst, as if he were trying to create a fictional equivalent of a Smiths song. It becomes painfully clear Pernice is no Morrissey when it comes to the nuances and drama of adolescence. The story drifts from one '80s movie cliché to another: a friend's suicide, the classmate with a terminal illness, the über-cool girl the narrator pines after (and tries to win with a pair of tickets to a Smiths concert), a group suicide pact, and a straight out of-The Wonder Years scene involving a consummate nerd trying to rope-climb during gym class. Without Morrissey's combination of melodrama, compassion, and camp, the narrator's problems seem all the more trivial. If Pernice set out "to make a predictable story as quick and painless as possible," then he succeeded. (Andrew Mister)

'Unknown Pleasures,' by Chris Ott Discerning music fans never favor New Order over Joy Division. You'll often hear them make pissy remarks about the offspring's perky synth lines and shameful willingness to be popular with those who just wanted to fucking dance. Somehow Joy Division's despair and wallowing in Holocaust imagery were more important. For whatever external characteristics we pedestrian devotees might attach to the bands we adore, author Chris Ott reveals something concrete: they saved punk. Or at least helped it stick around a little while longer by turning it into goth. (Or is it industrial dance?) While some other books in this series find the writer using the album as a point of departure for fantasies and theories, Ott, a former online music critic, plunges into factual details to reconstruct the career of the post-punk idols with the epileptic and ultimately suicidal singer, as he, sigh, tries to undo some of the damage done by marginal journalists. Although noble in its purpose, this endeavor is dull at times. The story ambles from an unenlightening exposition about the birth of punk and the importance of the Sex Pistols to Joy Division's various personnel changes and recording sessions without much structural guide, save for the enigmatic phrases cribbed from Emerson and Goethe that title each chapter and further glorify Ian Curtis as some sort of Faustian hero. To Ott's credit, however, he doesn't let Joy Division off the hook as easily as Tony Wilson's 24-Hour Party People did about the Nazi stuff. And it's endearing that he writes about each song as if crafting a college paper replete with exacting readings about how a strum of Bernard Sumner's guitar signals the fall of Western civilization or something. Once Ott forgoes the facts and gives in to his passion, he brings the reader closer to the band's "unparalleled gravity and grandeur." A real guilty pleasure, and isn't that what writing – and reading – these things is all about? (Deborah Giattina)