A quarter of this mercifully brief little essay is a paean of praise for the culturally sensitive and artistically brilliant corporate whores who conflated Nick Drake and car commercials. The first half of the book is a cloth-eared rehash of Patrick Humphries' excellent biography, interlaced with markedly uninformative interviews with people I've never heard of and Robyn Hitchcock. It is woeful and just a little bit evil. It gets a grudging half-star because the framing essay, discussing how Ms. Petrusich came upon "Pink Moon" and then how she listens to it less, was mildly interesting, and had she written that book, I would have read it with some interest. Not much, but some.

Chris Lilly ( )