Being semi-compulsive indie rock bloggers, I don’t think you’ll be surprised to know that there is only one thing we Citizen Dicks might like more than listening to and writing about indie rock: reading about indie rock. This is especially the case when the treatment of the subject is fictional in nature (that way we don’t have to get all jealous and competitive when someone out-critiques in the criticism market or out-histories in the rock history department. (Though I feel confident that no one can out-make up words us. We got that shit on lockdown.)

There are a fair number of fictional treatments of indie rock and all its sub-special accoutrements, from stories about rock bands to stories about rock fans with plot devices of all stripes available to anyone with a library card or an amazon wish list. The one thing these novels tend to have in common is the band name-dropping. In fact, you can usually tell how hip the writer (or, sometimes more realistically, the writer’s editor) is by his references. Dude throws out some Bono comparisons and you know he’s not the real deal, but if you get a Feelies or Pixies nod and you might be on to something.

In That Summertime Sound, Matthew Specktor proves that not only can he write an entire book, but that he also has his indie shout-outs down pat. In addition to the Feelies, you find mentions of Hüsker Dü, Pere Ubu, Uriah Heep, and many more. Just opening pages at random I find the following drops: The Small Faces, Suicide, and The Flamin’ Groovies (p. 31); The Cramps and Gang of Four (p. 64); Echo & the Bunnymen and Arthur Lee (p. 96); and so on and so on.

Point is, Specktor knows his indie genealogy back and forth, but this book is more than just an encyclopedia. That Summertime Sound also is a coming-of-age story of a young man from Los Angeles, educated at an elite east coast prep school, and more pumped up about spending a summer in the rust belt than anyone ever probably ought to be. Specktor writes nineteen-year-old pseudo-intellectual hipsters well (very, very well), for good and ill, and for every hackneyed reference Balzac (“Felice stood up to use the bathroom and I saw as I hadn’t earlier the battered paperback copy of Lost Illusions shoved in her back pocket.”), there are realistic arguments over this seminal band or that one, tales of tales to the thrift store, and the ever-present gnawing tension between being who you are and who you want others to think you are. All with a relatively fantastic literary soundtrack.

I’m not the only one saying good things about this book, either. Specktor’s debut novel has already garnered comparisons to writers as different and lauded as Jim Thompson and Kazuo Ishiguro, and one of my own personal favorite authors, Jonathan Lethem, bestowed upon the book the following choice jacket love:

Matthew Specktor’s That Summertime Sound isn’t so much a book as it is a door, hinged in memory, and swinging wide to every tenderhearted throb of lust and longing and precocious regret still there where you left it, at the periphery of adulthood. How does the novel perform on this trick? By prose as lucid and classical as Graham Greene’s in The End of the Affair, yet saturated in detail such that if you’d never had the luck to outgrow an ’80s teenage dream in Columbus, Ohio, you’ll feel you had after reading it.”

Got you interested yet? Good. You can get yourself a copy here (or by ordering one through your favorite neighborhood independent bookseller, which is my personal recommendation.)

If, however, you still need a little more incentive, to further sweeten the pot, I have an extra copy of That Summertime Sound to give away to one lucky Citizen Dick reader. Rather than do something like first come, first served, I figured I’d make this giveaway into something a little more fun (for us) and beneficial (again, for us). So, anyone interested in getting a complimentary copy of this book should either comment on this post or email me at justin AT citizendick.org with the following: their name and their own favorite book (preferably fiction) that deals with indie music. Tell me why you like that one (or why you think we might like it). The prize goes to the best recommendation we receive.