Manic, Pop, Thrill

A music journalist and manager, Felder writes stylishly and knowingly about alternative music in the United States and Great Britain. She draws on critic Fredric Jameson's definition of ``postmodernism'' in explaining how alternative music twists pop song conventions, and regularly refers to artists such as Jean Michel Basquiat and poets such as Philip Larkin to draw convention-busting parallels from other media. Felder addresses a range of genres from miasma bands, British and American guitar bands and grebo bands (a British equivalent of grunge) to feedback and art bands. Fans of bands from My Bloody Valentine to Jesus Jones will appreciate the way she captures their sound in prose: ``miasma music . . . actualizes the blur of drugs.'' She also provides useful context, tracing influences, such as the Velvet Underground's on miasma bands and Television's on British guitar bands, and analyzing the sociology behind the music: the Fall, for example, ``reeks of an England filled with unemployment, racism and . . . harshness.'' The book concludes with a discography and a list of sources of alternative music records and performance in selected cities . (Jan.)