In Ibi Kaslik’s The Angel Riots (Penguin, 256 pages, $22) string player Jim and trombonist Rize play in separate bands on the road together, bonding even as their respective bandmates begin to tweak on ego-feeding buzz. Rize and Jim have both left behind relationships that will be broken by the time the bands return to Montreal.

Orbiting, in real life, around the world of the Arts and Crafts label, Kaslik has obviously had access to the vicissitudes of tour vans. But if you’re expecting to read about the lives and loves of characters named “Horquil” or “Freist,” then you’ll be disappointed (or relieved). Kaslik has taken the time to write an actual novel in a genre not often graced with such effort.

The idea of rock (indie or otherwise) meeting narrative has always been dangerous. Pop music lives, breathes and dies on contrived authenticities, and viewed with any kind of novelistic scope, rock usually deflates into caricature because that is what it is. 

The Angel Riots succeeds past that, mostly because as important as music is to its characters (and some of Kaslik’s best passages evoke that love), character detail is more important to the writer. In this respect Kaslik’s book leans towards Robert Altman’s Nashville in tone rather than, say, Rick Springfield’s Hard to Hold. Not fussing around trying to be cool, she gets it mostly right. An observer skilled and exuberant enough in her writing as Kaslik could chronicle the lives of accountants just as well.

That exuberance sometimes gets the better of itself with the stories of Rize and Jim intersecting haphazardly and verging into outright sentimentality and a pat phrase or two. But even those flaws feel like the result of taking risks rather than pandering. You could call Kaslik’s novel By Casa del Popolo I Sat Down and Wept and not be far off the mark. 

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