285. Big Star, "Third/Sister Lovers"

 


It's unclear if this is actually a Big Star album or even an album at all, but it's still one of the most underappreciated and revelatory albums of all time.  In 1974, after having little or no success with Big Star's first two albums, Alex Chilton and drummer Jody Stephens went into the studio in Memphis and recorded a bunch of stuff with a number of studio musicians.  As Chilton's mental state deteriorated, the sessions finally ended and there was a bunch of tape with nowhere to go.  The songs were eventuyally collected and released a number of times on different labels and under different names.  The version that appears on this list appears to be the 1978 PVC Records release, although Rolling Stone's blurb says that "Kanga Roo" closes the album when "Thank You Friends" was actually the final song on that version.  

(Some of the tapes were labeled "Sister Lovers," probably because Chilton and Stephens were dating sisters at the time - one of whom, Lesa Aldridge, sings backup on a number of songs.)

No matter, though, because this record is astonishing.  There is certainly nothing wrong with the more or less straight ahead power-pop of Big Star's first two records (both of which we have already seen on this list), but for me, this is truly the masterpiece.  There are certainly the poppy rockers, like "Kizza Me" and "Thank You Friends," which is often read as a sarcastic sneer at everyone who never helped out (Chilton's "never too late to start" at the end reinforces this notion) but is also a fanastically catchy song:


But the album's interior reveals a storm of emotion, a collapsing psyche expressed through songs that are difficult, at times, even to listen to.  "Big Black Car" is a stark depiction of loneliness and solitude:

Maybe I'll sleep in a Holiday Inn
Nothing can hurt me
Nothing can touch me
Why should I care?

Driving's a gas
It ain't gonna last.
Sunny day, highway
If it rains it's all the same.
I can't feel a thing
I can't feel a thing

I've got a big black car.

"Holocaust" has a title that would be called "problematic" today, and is a stark and quiet portrait of heartbreak:

Everybody goes
Leaving those who fall behind
Everybody goes
As far as they can
They don't just care
You're a wasted face
You're a sad-eyed lie
You're a holocaust.

Yikes.  Not to say the whole album is a soul-crushing dive into madness and despair.  There's also a Christmas song!  "Jesus Christ" pops up in the middle of this thing, a near-perfect pop song about, yes, Jesus's birthday ("Jesus Christ was born today/Jesus Christ was born").

Anyway, I'm not doing it justice.  Maybe there's no real way to do it justice in writing, you just have to hear it.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Well, yeah.

(You'll have to give me a day or two on the next one, it's a FOUR-DISC set.)

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