[Janis Ian] has proved herself to be one of the most important writer-performers of the Seventies, and she looks at and into you from the cover photo with a veiled stare that can X-ray a situation, the people in it, and the probable outcome easily, knowingly, compassionately.

Janis Ian operates in the pop-music business, which perhaps denies her the instant credentials the fancier literary and artistic worlds might provide. But what she's been creating for the last several years is a body of work that, for awareness and insight into life as it's being lived (or played) in our time, stands creditably alongside the best in any field of contemporary creative expression…. ["Janis Ian"] finds Ian in a more subdued and contemplative mood than the flash and fireworks of her previous "Miracle Row." There isn't anything here that raises the emotional temperature in quite the same way as...