{"id":16388,"date":"2019-04-18T05:30:29","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T09:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=16388"},"modified":"2019-04-17T09:22:49","modified_gmt":"2019-04-17T13:22:49","slug":"album-reviews-two-alex-chilton-compilations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2019\/04\/18\/album-reviews-two-alex-chilton-compilations\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Reviews: Two Alex Chilton Compilations"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Editor’s Note: Today’s something of a milestone: my 3,000th post.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

As a general matter, I make a point of not writing reviews that are a response or rebuttal to other views. In fact, for the most part, I avoid even reading<\/em> other reviews, at least until after I\u2019ve filed mine. But I have been struck by the reaction to a recent pair of compilations that valiantly attempt to make sense of Alex Chilton\u2019s post-Big Star material. Many of the reviews I\u2019ve seen have been quite dismissive of the music he made in his later years, comparing it to both Big Star and even to the Box Tops.<\/p>\n

I suppose it\u2019s at least to some degree a matter of perspective. I first discovered Chilton\u2019s music during my college days, turned on to his work by a couple I knew. My first exposure, then, wasn\u2019t Radio City<\/i> (well, of course I had heard \u201cThe Letter,\u201d but that almost doesn\u2019t count in this context); it was Alex\u2019s 1985 EP Feudalist Tarts<\/i>. In fact, I saw him for the first (and sadly, only) time touring in support of that record. By the time of the show, I had absorbed the first two Big Star LPs, and loved them \u2013 still do \u2013 but I considered them separately from his then-current work, the same way I might have treated, say, Who\u2019s Next<\/i> differently than The Who Sell Out<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Subsequent EPs and long players like No Sex<\/i> and High Priest<\/i> were welcomed in the same way. Sure, the albums were uneven, but both in terms of songwriting and performance, they were superior to Like Flies on Sherbert<\/i>, to name one. Chilton\u2019s bratty, I-truly-don\u2019t-care sense of humor shone through on his records, and his skills as a guitarist \u2013 something for which he gets far too little praise \u2013 are on brilliant display. The new From Memphis to New Orleans<\/em> picks and chooses through his sorta-pop-rock-r&b work of the second half of the 1980s, assembling a 15-song disc that is consistently delightful. Is it earth-shakingly important as is #1 Record<\/em>? Perhaps not. Is it sloppy, offhand or in any way the product of a disinterested artist? Sure doesn\u2019t sound like it to me. Whether it\u2019s an original like \u201cUnderclass\u201d or a cover of\u201dLittle GTO,\u201d Chilton smolders here. Highly recommended.<\/p>\n

\"\"A companion set, Songs from Robin Hood Lane<\/i>, is perhaps more problematic, if only because it surveys Alex Chilton\u2019s love of vintage pop and jazz. Sourced from albums and sessions he did in the \u201890s, it finds Chilton playing solo or in minimalist trios, covering Jimmy Van Heusen, Frank Loesser and Cole Porter. If that kind of music isn\u2019t your bag, give this a miss. But for those who\u2019d like to better understand the wide variety of styles that informed Chilton\u2019s singular sensibility, it\u2019s essential. It\u2019s also damn<\/em> good, yet again underscoring the fact that \u2013 when he wanted to be \u2013 Alex Chilton was an incredibly expressive yet subtle guitarist, and a damn fine vocal interpreter of the Great American Songbook. If you choose to overlook that, it\u2019s your loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note: Today’s something of a milestone: my 3,000th post. As a general matter, I make a point of not writing reviews that are a response or rebuttal to other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16389,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,42,60,62],"tags":[157],"class_list":["post-16388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compilation","category-jazz","category-rb","category-rawk","tag-alex-chilton","cat-19-id","cat-42-id","cat-60-id","cat-62-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16388"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16604,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16388\/revisions\/16604"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}