Babes in Toyland's Fontanelle by Selena Chambers is a wonderful look at, arguably, one of the most important overlooked/forgotten albums of rock history (though that number is larger than it should be).

Chambers does an excellent job of giving background on the members and the band and an analysis of the album. One of the strengths of the 33 1/3 series is the freedom each writer has to approach the album under consideration as they think best, and this volume offers some pure music history (including some info from interviews) as well as analysis of songs and contextualization within the times.

The two times I saw them were both Lollapalooza shows so while I knew who they were I wasn't there specifically for them. I was, at the time, deep into my studies, much of which was in our WGS program, so thinking about popular culture such as music was part of what we did. The majority of the people I knew at that time was fine with Babes not proclaiming themselves mouthpieces for feminism since there music spoke volumes.

If you're hoping to get some kind of explanation of "what songs mean" from Bjelland, she wasn't interviewed. But even if she had been, writers are notorious for being less than honest or forthcoming about meaning, besides which, if you haven't figured out a meaning for yourself, maybe you should listen again and think for yourself. We do get plenty of background, from which we can make some guesses about why a song was written, which is different from "what a song means." If you need someone to tell you what a song means, then it doesn't mean anything to you.

I would recommend this to anyone interested in music as well as those who like to explore the interplay between popular culture and society as a whole.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )