"A masterful achievement." — Booklist (starred review)
“Riveting...In a gripping narrative, Gould traces Talking Heads’ journey from their hometowns to their art schools, Chrystie Street loft, and eventual global stardom. He sharply analyzes their work and includes rich portraits of individuals, art movements, and music scenes in their orbit.” — New York Post
“Like with his now-classic book Can’t Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain, And America, Gould infuses his writing with an indelible sense of time and place, making the music feel like part of the scenery and vice versa.”
— AV Club
"Definitive...Not just for Talking Heads fans—it’s a masterful dive into downtown New York in the 70s, and the changing face of rock music.” — Town & Country
“Well-researched and impressive, this is the definitive history of Talking Heads, which will appeal to anyone interested in modern rock.” — Library Journal (starred review)
“Music biographer Gould tells the definitive story of the Talking Heads and the gritty New York City scene that birthed them in this overdue account, out just in time for the 50th anniversary of the band’s founding.” — The Millions
“Gould delivers a colorful and expansive genealogy of the band and the scruffy downtown music scene they helped form…devoted Talking Heads fans will want to pick this up.” — Publishers Weekly
“[An] impressive biography…. Access to Redding’s surviving family members helps Gould flesh out his upbringing and offstage personality…. Music historians like Peter Guralnick, Rob Bowman and Robert Gordon have all done essential work on the history of Stax, but Gould takes a contrary and provocative position on the label’s relationship to its greatest star.” — New York Times Book Review on Otis Redding
“Magisterial… With meticulous scholarship, lively prose, and a tale that uses a singular musician as a springboard into interrogating America’s political and popular cultures, Gould has created a vital book that helps contextualize one of the most important figures in pop music.” — Boston Globe on Otis Redding
“An absorbing and ambitious book…[that] succeeds in making [Redding] seem a good deal more remarkable by taking the measure of the historical circumstances he emerged from…. Among the great pleasures…are [Gould’s] very considered assessments of each of Otis’s albums, track by track.” — New York Review of Books on Otis Redding
"Gould has written a scrupulous, witty and, at times, appropriately skeptical study… Gould, it turns out, is an astute and sensitive choreographer... At his best, he lets you hear with keener ears the way a great novelist lets you feel with keener emotions. He even made me want to listen to 'Eleanor Rigby' again. I can’t think of higher praise." — New York Times Book Review on Can't Buy Me Love