One can hear the influence of Modernism and the "New American" poetry in Russell's lyrical phrasing. In such phrasing––largely intuitive according to Nick Hallett––one hears an emphasis on composition by breath, where words find measure through breathing patterns and a singing commensurate with 'everyday' speaking. Russell's use of breath as a measure of composition derives from the time he spent in a Buddhist monastery in the lower Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco in the late 1960s, but it also probably derives from his reading of William Carlos Williams via Ginsberg.

Often, circling around a simple phrase, and turning it over and over, changes the meaning of words to profound effect. Through his compositions and songs, Russell both frames and pierces a world of appearances. "And I'm hi-ding / Your present from you. // Where you see where it is, but don't know where it is." The effect of Russell's lyrics is disclosure and chiasmus. In Russell's song "Hiding Your Present From You," "present" refers both to a gift one hides from someone they share a domestic space with (a lover, family member, or roommate) before their birthday, and to one's sense of the now–occurrence, happening, simultaneity, event. Russell's lyrics, often dialogic (symbiotic? bionic?) with his cello playing, drum machines, and effects pedals, are always slightly outside (or beside?) the present. They mess with presence, thus heightening one's sense of it. A sense of disclosure pervades all of Russell's music, and is completely accomplished in what many consider Russell's masterpiece, his 1986 album/composition World of Echo.

Having fully disclosed my devotion to Russell's work and my identifications with him as a poet, I don’t have enough good things to say about Tim Lawrence's biography, which is thoroughly researched, well told, and which successfully pushes the envelope of what biographies can accomplish. One of the most impressive things that Lawrence does throughout Hold On To Your Dreams, is not only provide a sensitive and detailed rendering of Russell's life, but also the story of large and complex cultural confluences channeled by a single person. Russell's lifework is also a Whitmanesque project of containing multitudes inasmuch as it successfully negotiates groups of people, musical styles, and cultures that, to many at the time, seemed at best mutually exclusive, and at worst downright antagonistic. As Lawrence insists repeatedly throughout his book, during a time when 'avant garde,' pop, classical, (post-) punk, and emergent dance musics such as disco and house could not seem to speak to each other, let alone find common cause, Russell was equally pioneering in each musical culture/genre.