i loved you, well, never mind...

On a music forum that I visit regularly, a group of folks are discussing a great album each week during 2009. The first album that was selected was Big Star's Radio City (1974). Here's what I had to say about it:

When I saw this would be the first album for the first installment of the Listening Group discussion, I expected that most of the folks here would respond very favorably to it, since I remember being really taken with it when I first heard it about fifteen years ago. So I've been a little surprised to see that it isn't more well-received than it is, but I've been interested in reading why people do or don't love this album.

I fall on the side of loving it, even if I don't think it is a perfect album. I think it is a very strong album, although not as good as #1 Record. When I began listening to it again for this discussion, I also noticed the unfortunate mixing. It's an album that could be so very rich--with songs that might have had the thick lush sonics of Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. But because it doesn't, it often sounds much flatter than it should. That said, this jangle-pop sound doesn't necessarily lend itself to a richly textured quality--much in the way that R.E.M. and The Replacements (the obvious Big Star progeny) don't.

There are some great songs here--"O My Soul" is a great album opener, and the bass lines in "Life Is White" and "You Get What You Deserve" are really lovely. "September Gurls" is a contender for best Big Star song (although I guess I'd ultimately give "Thirteen" first place). The harmonica doesn't bother me as much as it does others. It seems to echo the aching, broken, at times desperate, vocals that are featured on many of the songs here. My least favorite are the swaggering rockers--"She's a Mover" (T. Rex nails this kind of thing much better) and "Mod Lang" (a clear nod to the Stones, but with less convincing vocals)--as I think Big Star more successfully and so beautifully conveys young male amorous heartbreak and frustration. Big Star just doesn't do cock-rock all that well.

"What's Going Ahn" is one my favorites here: even while the singer asserts that he's got a handle on how the world works and what love is, the "oh nooos" at the song's ending fly in the face of such self-assurance. And I'm in the minority in being moved by "Morpha Too" and "I'm in Love With a Girl." Along with "Thirteen," these strike me as charming, simple, wistful ballads that evoke that painful period between one's teens and adulthood when love seems at once so real and so impossible. As weird as "Morpha Too" is, it seems to look toward the more experimental masterpieces "Kangaroo" and "Holocaust" that show up on the third album.

"September Gurls" is just a lovely song that is both poppy and plaintive at the same time. "I loved you, well, never mind / I've been crying all the time" is a touching confession that works against the upbeat summertime quality (as do the references to fall and winter that work to position boys and girls differently and suggest that they can never really catch up with one another, nor can they revisit summer, which the song recalls, even as the lyrics suggest it has already passed). It begins to great effect, works a wonderful melody against a compelling bass counterpoint, and the simple guitar solo at about 1:18 is terrific. It's not as good a song as "God Only Knows," but it draws upon a similar sensibility that acknowledges reasons both to celebrate and complain about the complicated nature of love.

I'd give this four stars if I didn't still have such a nostalgic soft spot for it, but because I do, I can go as high as four and 1/2.

mp3: "September Gurls"