Of the tropes that are part of the scene for any art form\u2014and rock and roll is no exception\u2014perhaps the most familiar is the tortured\/overlooked\/misunderstood genius. Alex Chilton undeniably fits the profile, an artist ahead of his time, a trailblazer and influencer who could also be volatile and self-destructive. Only adding to the mystique is the fact that his recorded output in his prime, while hugely influential, was modest in scope. <\/p>\n
The first Big Star album #1 Record<\/i> was a band album that found former Box-Tops lead singer Chilton (guitar and vocals) joining the group\u2019s founding members Chris Bell (guitar and vocals), Andy Hummel (bass and vocals) and Jody Stephens (drums). In this initial four-man configuration, Bell and Chilton shared the main writing duties and alternated on lead vocals. However, the headstrong Chilton had been the last to join what had been essentially Bell\u2019s band, and there was immediate tension between the two, resolved only when Bell departed soon after that remarkable first album, leaving the band in limbo.<\/p>\n
With Big Star inactive, Chilton recorded three songs with an alternate rhythm section (Danny Jones on bass and Richard Rosebrough on drums) before a single now-legendary reunion gig with Hummel and Stephens convinced the trio to reform and record the rest of the album that would become Radio City<\/i>. <\/p>\n
While Bell\u2019s shimmery folk-rock influence is missed, the remaining group\u2019s musical flavoring was in a sense more concentrated than ever: jangly, hook-happy British-Invasion-derived rock and roll paired with downbeat, introspective lyrics, a distinctive form that would come to be known as power pop. Bands from R.E.M. and The Replacements to Teenage Fanclub and Gin Blossoms would emulate and elaborate on this musical style in the decades to come, but Big Star and similarly Beatles-infatuated contemporaries like Badfinger and the Raspberries are generally regarded as the points of origin for power pop. <\/p>\n
Opener and first single \u201cOh, My Soul\u201d\u2014one of the tunes Bell is thought to have contributed to before departing\u2014comes off like the raucous celebration of a nervous breakdown. The music is bouncy and riffy and catchy as Chilton sings about falling apart; in other words, the very essence of power pop. <\/p>\n
Next up, \u201cLife Is White\u201d comes off both upbeat and mournful, with harmonica inevitably striking a plaintive note. There\u2019s a sense of defeat in Chilton\u2019s words, and it\u2019s hard to miss an echo of Robin Wilson in his melancholy vocals\u2014another of the weird inversions that a going-backwards power-pop fan encounters as you come to realize just how much Gin Blossoms were influenced by Big Star. \u201cWay Out West\u201d\u2014bassist Andy Hummel\u2019s sole composition and lead vocal\u2014is similarly bright-yet-mournful, conveying a strong undercurrent of disillusion.<\/p>\n
Another distinctive thing about this album\u2014and power pop in general\u2014is the length of the songs. With the exception of the album version of \u201cOh, My Soul\u201d (cut almost in half for its single edit), these songs are short and sweet and to the point, pulling off the magic trick of feeling loose and full of attitude while existing within a tightly crafted compositional structure.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s Going Ahn?\u201d again features bright, jangly guitars\u2014both acoustic and electric\u2014paired with mopey lyrics, finishing with flair as Chilton executes a brief, tricksy double-tracked call-and-answer vocal segment that you\u2019ve heard nods to on a hundred power-pop tracks since. Then \u201cYou Get What You Deserve\u201d turns up the aggression factor with muscular guitars. The title suggests Chilton is heaping scorn on a departed ex, but the hazy lyrics eventually bring you to realize he\u2019s talking to himself, saying, in essence, \u201cI got what I deserved\u201d\u2014another self-critical power-pop trope. The track wraps with a tight, careening guitar solo that manages to feel both reckless and carefully calibrated.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Big Star is often positioned as an almost-direct descendent of The Beatles, but the swaggering \u201cMod Lang\u201d is distinctly Rolling Stones in its vibe: loose, loud, greasy and dripping with attitude (Keith would approve). Next up, Chris Bell is again said to have had an uncredited hand in \u201cBack Of A Car,\u201d whose rich jangle locates the optimal balance point between the sunny instruments and the downcast lyric, about hiding out from heartbreak inside the music. At just 2:46, it\u2019s another exceptionally concise little masterpiece. <\/p>\n
One of the things Big Star does so well on this album is to maximize the sonic variety available from two guitars (all played by Chilton), bass and drums. On \u201cDaisy Glaze\u201d the guitars nearly chime like bells, and then halfway through the song transforms, bumping up the tempo and evolving the guitar sound before it wraps up with a jam that\u2019s as close to exuberant as Big Star ever gets. \u201cShe\u2019s A Mover\u201d then executes a sonic one-eighty, a chunky, Who-style rocker with some crunch to it. <\/p>\n
Second single\u2014and most universally lauded track here\u2014\u201cSeptember Gurls\u201d is a prototypical power-pop tune with those burnished, Byrds-ian guitars offset by yearning vocals. Even the concise closing solo smacks of Roger McGuinn; two bars and the song is over in just 2:47. It\u2019s followed by the oddest number here; \u201cMorpha Too\u201d is a depressive, shambolic piano ballad of just 1:28 that sounds like Chilton raising a white flag deep in the night. As with \u201cMorpha,\u201d closer \u201cI\u2019m In Love With A Girl\u201d sounds like just Chilton, here on guitar, delivering a lyric expressing his astonishment at falling in love, his plaintive wail a perfect summation of the power-pop ethos: I\u2019m a loser and nothing could ever possibly go right for me\u2026 but check out this killer hook.<\/p>\n
Desperation saturates every line of Radio City<\/i>; it\u2019s an album made by a band that\u2019s gone over a cliff, only to find itself still clinging to a ledge, a brief reprieve before that inevitable final fall. In the contrast of bright, riffy, attitude-rich music with fatalistic lyrics, Big Star offered up the essential building blocks of a new genre; power-pop would grow and evolve, of course, but for a remarkable number of artists who followed, their musical story started here, with #1 Record<\/a><\/i> and its even more frantic, messy, and matchless successor Radio City<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":24330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5658],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-46913","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-big-star","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46913"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}