Out of the Vinyl Deeps should take its place alongside Marcus’s Mystery Train and Bangs’s Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung as one of the canonical documents of early pop music criticism. Even with her tendency to use big words and big ideas, Willis always knew at heart that music was a gas, gas, gas. She celebrated the seriousness of pleasure and relished the pleasure of thinking seriously. She followed in the footsteps of the New Yorker critics Dorothy Parker and Pauline Kael, and elbowed her way into the men’s club of music criticism. Maybe she didn’t even realize it was a men’s club—Willis seemed fiercely independent that way. Ultimately, Out of the Vinyl Deeps makes you want to do what the best music criticism should: pull out a record and listen to it with new ears.