A Groundbreaking Return
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The first Big Star record in 30 years, “In Space,” opens with five seconds of the coolest music I’ve ever heard. Two guitars shimmer in, one in each speaker, and someone in the background yells “Oh!” The guitars are chimey, jangling, and pulsing, and even before the crash cymbal, it is clear Big Star is back.
The song brings a smile to my face every time: It’s just right. I don’t mean that it sounds as if nothing has changed, and I don’t mean that it sounds like Big Star imitating itself. But that “Oh!” sounds honest. The band, it seems, is just as excited as we are.
Big Star certainly went into the studio with a lot to live up to. Big Star is the kind of band that made its fans start bands (The Replacements, R.E.M.), and the group is credited with inventing power pop, wherein the guitars are big but the songs are pretty. It is consistently referred to as the second most influential rock band ever after the Velvet Underground.
Armed with the knowledge that their fans refer to them as “groundbreaking” and “inventive,” the group’s members had to come up with a record knowing that if they broke any new ground, everyone would hate them for not sounding like they used to. And if they sounded like their old selves, they’d fail if only because they’re not drunken 20-year-olds anymore – and everyone would say they lacked imagination. But all you can legitimately ask for is that the band not forget the phrasing and the choices that made us love Big Star in the first place. And on that, this record delivers. It’s also got some very weird – perhaps even groundbreaking – moments.
The band is so popular right now that the cognoscenti will repudiate them momentarily – that’s what you get for having one of your songs become the theme for “That ’70s Show.” But back in the 1970s, Big Star was honest, vivid, and heartbreaking. The band’s first two records were desperate, sad music about teenagers, with soaring harmonies and chiming guitars. This was troubled love, troubled self, troubled youth: boredom and loathing. Not idealized, not romanticized, just there.
Singer-guitarist Alex Chilton had been in the Box Tops as a high school kid – that’s him singing “Gimme a ticket for an aeroplane” in “The Letter” at 16. He was no stranger to soul music and the Memphis sound, but Chilton turned his attentions across the pond and began singing with a clipped voice in a high register. This was one of Big Star’s major contributions. Along with Lou Reed, Chilton handed this nasal American Englishness to a whole generation of rockers – funny, since the Brits had been pretending to be Southern and emotive, and now all these Southerners were pretending to be English and affectless.
Ardent/Stax blew it big time with the Big Star records – many albums never even made it to the stores. Even if people had wanted to purchase “#1 Record” or “Radio City,” they couldn’t find a copy. But even this obscurity couldn’t tarnish the band’s ascending reputation. Big Star was the band people traded tapes of. They were collector’s items, badges of connoisseurship. The Replacements even cut a song called “Alex Chilton.”
Now, original Big Star members Chilton and Jody Stephens (drums) have been joined by guitarist Jon Auer and bassist Ken Stringfellow of the Posies (who also tours with R.E.M.). This iteration of Big Star, although only now releasing its first record, has clocked far more hours together than the original band, which began falling apart when Chris Bell left after the first record, and was dissolved by 1975 (when the third album came out in 1978, there wasn’t even a band to support it).This foursome has been playing shows for over a decade. But no record, until now.
And what an album it is. The first three tracks of “In Space” (Rykodisc), which comes out today, really sound like Big Star, and they are wonderful songs that get better with each listen. Track 4, “Turn My Back on the Sun” is a grower – starting with a wonderfully hackish, sloppy version of the intro to the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” At first, I thought it was a dull song, but soon I found myself singing along. This is where this record begins to reveal its true character: raw, weird, funny.
And it doesn’t get rawer, weirder, or funnier than “Love Revolution,” a flat-out disco funk riff on Andre Bell and the Drells. “February’s Quiet,” on the other hand, sounds like the Jayhawks at their best (which is just the Jayhawks sounding Big Star, after all), brilliant in its simplicity. The lyrical hook is one of the most pleasing things I’ve heard in a year.
The band is going to get a bit of grief for some of the R&B on this album, but I think it’s the important stuff. “Mine Exclusively,” a cover of an Olympics song, absolutely leaps out of the speakers. The backup vocals, the incessant riffs, the tambourine: This is when I started to think that perhaps this is an astonishing album.
Some of the new music – think the Blues Brothers without the virtuosity of Steve Cropper – might rub folks the wrong way. The first time I heard them do it, I sat back and uttered a “What the …” It’s white for one thing, it’s definitely blue-eyed soul, but hot, and rough, and infectious. Motown harmonies on the backup singing, tambourines. Where bluesy funk rockers like Mooney Suzuki and John Spencer have turned to Hendrix for their inspiration, this is more along the lines of the Muscle Shoals band, or Booker T: laid back, controlled, and pumping. It will eventually prove to be the most forward-looking stuff on the record.
Just like the first Big Star records, this sound is going to make people want to start bands. Garage soul: Can’t you see it? The Supremes with loud electric guitars? Sam and Dave with crash cymbals? Where else could we be headed?