Big Star 2: Radio City

With their first album finding little commercial success, Big Star kinda fell apart, but reconvened as a three-piece without Chris Bell once Alex Chilton started writing and recording a few more songs. Consequently, the sound of Radio City is harder, and more unified by one voice.

“O My Soul” is a compact symphony, well-constructed and powerfully sung in basically a guitar-and-drums showcase overdubbed with a wheezy synth. (It’s also pointedly in mono, very much odd for 1974.) Followed by “Life Is White”, which sports a wheezing harmonica over a stumbling rhythm, we have a harbinger of the fractured sound that would dominate the next Chilton project. Andy Hummel’s “Way Out West” (sung by drummer Jody Stephens) and the hobbling “What’s Going Ahn” (one of three songs recorded with a different rhythm section before becoming a Big Star project) are nicely sequenced for balance. “You Get What You Deserve” is a sharp finger-pointing song Ray Davies would have been proud to pen.

“Mod Lang” is fairly dirty sounding, but for power pop greatness, it’s hard to beat “Back Of A Car”, and dig those galloping drum fills. “Daisy Glaze” is another multipart wonder, with mood swings indiscernible lyrically and open to misunderstanding. Credited to all three members, it’s quite the accomplishment. “She’s A Mover” is fairly ordinary boogie, but “September Gurls” is another well-loved power pop nugget, and no, we don’t know what’s up with all the creative spelling throughout these titles. Two basically solo Chilton performances, “Morpha Too” and “I’m In Love With A Girl” seem to come out of nowhere but cap the album perfectly.

Radio City was as much of a commercial dud as the debut was, and the band was pretty much done, though the musicians would continue to create, as we shall soon see. Luckily for those of us who weren’t there the first time, enough bands and critics kept the spirit of Big Star afloat that, in time, the band finally received the acclaim it deserved. Best of all, the first two albums enhance each other so well that their continued existence paired on a single CD makes it an absolute bargain.

Big Star Radio City (1974)—4½