It's the toff version of Everything But the Girl, Big Deal, and their debut album from last year Lights Out. In some ways this collection of sappy indie is truly terrible, but there's something so very charming and homely about it all that it's tough not to love it. The affected weariness of it all should be irritating but instead feels just right. I don't know how they've pulled it off because there's really nothing about Lights Out that should feel anything other than slightly wrong, but it's just too sweet, and no matter how much it seems to whine, you can't help but like it the more.
And now it's rock music the way it's meant to be. Obviously Big Star scarcely put a foot wrong in their all too brief career, and the only two official albums that they made in the 1970's are masterpieces of classic rock songwriting. Taking their cues from every pop/rock act that preceded them, the bands start in 1971 was perfectly timed to take advantage of all the stylistic flourishes and tricks that other bands had utilised. #1 Record (1972) is one of the all-time great albums and although its self-aggrandising title proved to be disastrously wide of the mark, it certainly deserved a considerably better commercial fate than it received. The songs on #1 Record are peerless, from the razor-sharp rock of 'In the Street' and 'Don't Lie To Me' to the reflective acoustic numbers ('Thirteen' of course, and the perfect 'Watch the Sunrise') and there isn't a moment on the album that isn't pristine (although 'The India Song' does date it...). The commercial collapse of the album due to Stax's catastrophic distribution deals meant that tensions in the band swiftly developed and, besides attacking each other, they variously attacked themselves (Chris Bell's drug abuse contributing, I'm sure, to his eventual demise, driving his car into a telegraph pole, and Alex Chilton's spiralling alcoholism). Nonetheless, despite the friction they managed (mostly without Bell) to record second album Radio City (1974). Although slightly darker in tone this is another shining example of how rock is done. Completely enlivening and uplifting, once again every song here is a dream. Bell's main contribution, 'Back of a Car' points to his own psychological discomfort while still managing to be a perfect rock song. If anything, the album goes to prove that people can make great art, sometimes because of, but usually despite, going through hell at the time.
Big Star were effectively over following the release of Radio City, but Chilton had more fish to fry and he (together with BS drummer Jody Stephens) went into the studio to record some tracks that reflected Chilton's state of mind at the time. To say it was an unhappy and somewhat addled state of mind would be to understate it and the tracks that the pair recorded and that were eventually released as Third/Sister Lovers (1975/1978/1992) alternate between desperate attempts at bright rock music ('Kizza Me', the viciously sarcastic 'Thank You Friends' and the bitter ire of 'You Can't Have Me') which actually sound as strainingly unhappy as bright rock music can sound, and absolutely hellish slower songs hinting at unbelievable despair ('Holocaust', 'Kangaroo'). Even when it's on its uppers, the album is still unremittingly bleak. There are some truly beautiful songs ('Stroke It, Noel', 'For You', 'Take Care' - Stephens makes the valid point that it would be a very different album without his introduction of the string section) but they are all delivered with Chilton's cracked and melancholic tone. Despite its completely reckless eclecticism and the ramshackle and revealing covers of 'Til the End of the Day' and 'Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On' Third/Sister Lovers is, without doubt, one of the best rock records of the 1970's, but as no final running order was ever agreed, the various editions of the album that have been released over the years have each had their own tracklisting (hence the 75/78/92 reference above) and therefore there remains no definitive version of the album.
Many years later, thanks to an increasingly vocal US underground talking up the Big Star albums, the band reformed and did a couple of tours in the early 1990's. The first studio release, following a live album in 1992 was a 7" with Teenage Fanclub that was given away with the NME. The two songs, covers of 'Mine Exclusively' and 'Patti Girl', have each band taking the lead. Big Star head 'Mine Exclusively' and it's a fairly pointless straightforward rock 'n' roll reading of a soul song, while Teenage Fanclub do their usual melodic rock thing to 'Patti Girl'. Following the successes of the reformation and the tours, together with the continued public interest, Big Star went back into the studio to record a full album and the result was 2005's In Space. It's hard to know what to make of In Space. In truth it's not much more than a power-pop record by the Posies. The Big Star line-up at this point was Jody Stephens part-time, Alex Chilton and most of the Posies. As a result this is a kind of "good-time" pop record but it certainly isn't a Big Star record. Chilton's sporadic solo albums had given a lot away, consisting for the most part of rock n roll cover versions. So on In Space we've got Jacksons style choppy guitar, Archie Bell bouncing bass and some splashy high-hat and cymbal work, absolutely nothing resembling the Big Star sound. It's not a truly terrible record, just a not very good and essentially pointless one.
To remind us of the glittering brilliance that the band once achieved, we now have the exhaustive Keep Your Eye on the Sky box set, containing pretty much everything Big Star recorded from their inception to their break-up in 1974, together with a full live show from 1973. Only three years worth of material, but they put a lot to tape in that time. For the collector this stuff is gold, containing as it does, two pre-Big Star songs by Bell and his band Icewater (and one pre-BS song by Chilton) as well as a wealth of alternate and demo versions of most of the songs from the classic first three albums, and a handful of offcuts and songs that didn't make it on to the albums. It's all truly amazing stuff, and the live show from 1973 is suitably raucous and knockabout, but does a great job of showcasing just how powerful these songs were.
And after that awesome dose of classic rock, tomorrow offers to be something of a more mixed bag...
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