This book is an educational tour de force and it is nice to read more from Emma Baulch after her important work on reggae, punk and death metal in 1990s Bali (Baulch Reference Baulch2007). Using the key concept of genre publics, Baulch here encourages us to look at Indonesian popular music and popular culture as integral to both regime change and new forms of active citizenship. ‘Genre publics’ refers to the process of a publication addressing an audience, purposefully and strategically, by a series of consecutive texts produced with certain aim(s). The ‘public’ is called out and called to, and later comes to embody the values inculcated in part owing to consumption choices. Emma Baulch begins what is, in effect, a history book in Chapter 1 around 1965 when she looks at the rock magazine Aktuil. She argues that in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the magazine created a public of discerning and critical middle-class rock fans, which were encouraged to embody the pemuda dynamics of the 1928 nationalists and the 1940s revolutionaries. As a result, she argues, a more critical generation of consumer-rock fans was created, which later fed into the countercultural push against the New Order regime. I suggest that, following Jeremy Wallach's Modern Noise (Reference Wallach2007), a date range be added to the title, for example 1965–2015, as few events and references after 2015 are cited.

In the second chapter, Baulch refers to Aihwa Ong's (Reference Ong2006) writings on neoliberalism and the idea of consumer citizenship in Asia to write about mostly post-2000 developments, with a focus on the rock band Slank and its relations with politician Joko Widodo (Jokowi). Chapter 3 traces the rise of Sumatran group Kangen Band. Originally, the band viewed its songs as pop-Indonesia but, on signing to Positif Art, it became known as pop-Melayu, suggesting that it was (like working-class local folk music dangdut) ‘from below’. Kangen Band's new genre construction was based on its discovery by a Jakarta producer and the band members’ move to the capital, rather than on their creation of new sounds.

In Chapter 4, Baulch explores the rise of the visual aspect of rock owing to the proliferation of music videos. She argues that the pemuda concept of critical-thinking, politically aware youth, was still being assumed or catered to, with the all-male rock supergroups. However, it was under challenge from the sovereign consumer ideal. In my research with Rex Walsh on Bandung Death Metal, beginning in 2011 (James and Walsh Reference James and Walsh2015, Reference James and Walsh2018, Reference James and Walsh2019), we too found that many musicians and fans thought that black-T-shirts-plus-loud-music signifies underground values, by definition, and although many musicians are social and political activists in their own ways (such as Man of Jasad and Butche of The Cruel), many are not. Many just enjoy the soundscapes and the sociality – there is nothing wrong with that, but is it pemuda? Baulch concludes that Bali punks Superman is Dead – whose videos show the band mobilising their bodies by tattoos and presenting in a cosmopolitan ‘border zone’ (p. 101) pub in Kuta – position themselves as ‘model post-authoritarian citizens’ (p. 103). A criticism can be made here: ‘model’ for whom? For some yes, but surely not for everyone. The situation outside the tourist capital of Bali is very different too, as bands from those places have fewer cultural resources to draw upon, in terms of becoming ‘models’, but still aspire to achieve this status. In Chapter 4's conclusion, Baulch argues that ‘the qualities of this anchoring varied much according to gender’ (p. 108). While gender is important, two illuminating case studies (Superman is Dead and Krisdayanti) are not enough to warrant such a strong conclusion. Studies of Indonesian women metal musicians by Kieran James and Rex Walsh (Popo of Demons Damn and Maya of Mortality) suggest that they are able and willing to enact or explore considerable meaningful agency outside of playing up to long-held conservative gender stereotypes, as Baulch argues Krisdayanti does.

Chapter 5 is about the role of nostalgia within the Indonesian music industry. Baulch argues that, in that context, nostalgia may contest the New Order's version of modernity and focus attention on the conditions leading to its fall. However, in relation to Rolling Stone Indonesia's commemorative article on rock band God Bless (Denny, Reference Denny2009), she concludes that, by pinpointing God Bless’ origins in the 1970s, the New Order is validated because the regime provided the context and opportunity for rock music to flourish.

In Chapter 7, Baulch explains how Balinese singer, Nanoe Biroe, and his fans (Baduda) aim to create an alternative moral vision for post-authoritarian life under administrative decentralisation. The ‘President of Baduda Republic’ image, featuring Biroe's head in Che Guevara pose, posits a new kind of political authority, not one looking down ‘gloomily’ (p. 154) from framed photographs in official halls, but one rubbing against bodies through mobile phones and T-shirts. A similar circulating image, observed during my Bandung fieldwork, was the ‘Man Jasad for president’ sticker. By calling himself Man, the singer avoids the question of whether he is ‘the man’ or just ‘(hu)man’, so he can be both. Unlike Biroe, he is only a candidate for presidency (not in real life obviously), which suggests a latent humility and the awareness that Death Metal is an extreme underground genre and not to everyone's tastes. Both artists, Nanoe and Man Jasad, use the same self-aggrandising strategy of pretending to be president, or presidential candidate.

Baulch's writing is excellent throughout – entertaining and highly readable, and yet always retaining theoretical strength and technical accuracy. Her passion for Indonesia and its popular music shines through. The writing is at a fast and consistent pace throughout, much like an extended rock song with the punctuation marks akin to heavy-metal drumbeats! The book very much has a Jakarta–Bali focus, so the use of the word ‘Indonesia’ in the subtitle is inaccurate and regrettable. This is not to say that the author shows bias or even inadvertent neglect, as these two places were the locations for her fieldwork. However, Bandung, Surabaya, Malang and Yogyakarta are extremely important and unique cities of cultural production too, and they only get a passing mention at best here. The revival of Islamic punk and metal is also mentioned, rather than covered.

Lastly, readers are reminded that this is a history book covering events going back to around 1965. Most fieldwork took place in 2004 and 2009. This is an invaluable resource for scholars of Indonesian music, but readers should be aware of the dates of the fieldwork for each chapter. The book should be of interest to students of Indonesian media, society and politics, and scholars of the region looking at new approaches to citizenship. As numerous authors in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies and so on are cited and discussed throughout, the book will also be useful to scholars in search of new theorists.