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September 07, 2005
White dwarf
Having recently been reminded that Alex Chilton is alive, in a manner of speaking, I thought I'd go ahead and check out the other notable recent reminder: In Space, the altogether unexpected new record from "Big Star" (that is, Chilton, the surprisingly clunky drumming of original member Jody Stephens, and Ken Stringfellow and Jon Auer of The Big Star Experience! The Posies). It's a wild and woolly thing, this record, let me tell you. I think "dreadful" is a reasonable adjective to use for most of what's going on here, but there are some wonderful musical ideas also, and even hints at the genius Chilton once possessed — I ask you to fight your way through "Dony" (especially) and "Lady Sweet" and tell me otherwise.
Unfortunately, things like horribly incongruous saxophone parts and lyrics like "Surely you're aware / You're blowing my mind" can turn smiles to cringes in a heartbeat (as can jaw-dropping tracks like "Mine Exclusively"). None of the well-founded ideas on In Space come anywhere near fruition, but surrounding oneself with those who idolize you will do that, I imagine, especially when you're notoriously messed up in the head to begin with.
It is a fascinating piece of work nonetheless; it's a little like stumbling across Chilton's psychiatrist's scratchpad put to song. There are two possibilities: one, Chilton listens intently to the bands he influenced; or two, he's the musical recluse I assumed he was, and yet he still managed to drop a record full of songs that sound exactly like Fountains of Wayne, and one that rips off the opening riff to Sloan's "She Says What She Means" all but note-for-note. "Turn My Back on the Sun" performs similarly minute surgery on the introductory jingle to "Wouldn't It Be Nice?" and then launches into an aimless, pablum-flavoured piece of weirdness that Adam Schlesinger might have discarded when he was 16.
I've never heard any of Chilton's other solo material — from what I've read, it's terrible, and I somehow suspect that In Space is among the very best work he's done since Big Star. I'm not sorry he did it; it's not as if he wrote "Freedom". If this turns a few hundred more people on to Big Star, whose best moments are among the very finest things rock and roll has ever seen, it will have been more than worthwhile. It would be unseemly, I think, to wonder how many more units it would have moved had Chilton not survived Katrina's wrath.
Posted by Chris Selley at September 7, 2005 11:41 PM
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