Alex Ross's followup to THE REST IS NOISE hits the bookshelves today. The Rest is Noise is one of the first ever books to deal with 20th century music from an unacademic standpoint. Only a few years ago it was still considered sacrelige to say in print that tonal composers like Britten, Sibelius and John Adams were composers as great (to say nothing of 'greater') than the more academic (in both good and bad senses) music of Webern, Stockhausen and Carter. This was a book that almost single-handedly demolished one of the notions that increasingly kept classical music on the margins of society for the past century.

Now here comes LISTEN TO THIS, a book that is said to treat Bjork and Sonic Youth with the same involvement as one gives to Schubert and Brahms. I'm making a beeline to B&N tomorrow morning.