Kangaroo

"These are parlous times, Alex. Sloppy's getting harder to bring off, and cute ain't enough."

-Robert Christgau

Big Star produced some of the loveliest, most heartfelt, spooky and inspiring music these ears have ever heard. Songs like Holocaust, Jesus Christ, Oh Dana, The Ballad of El Goodo, When My Baby's Beside Me, combine a surety of melody with sparse instrumentation and haunted vocals to create powerfully mood altering music. Just when I think the world has gone wrong, I pop in one of Big Star's, or Alex Chilton's discs, and things don't seem so bad anymore.

Thus it is with great pleasure that Chilton's newest effort, A Man Called Destruction, is such a wonderful (and a little bit surprising, certainly unexpected) effort. The contest is over! We have a winner folks, and they need not make any more CDs this year! You can't do any better! Chilton's solo career seldom has achieved the same emotional intensity of Big Star's best work, yet he remains a quirky artist one who is unquestionably a truly committed singer/ songwriter/performer mixing personal angst with what is at the heart of all great rock and roll: passion and primal simplicity.

High Priest, Alex's last full length studio effort was a continuing return to his R&B roots. A Man Called Destruction is molded from the same vein. The song cycle kicks off with a spirited rocker called Sick and Tired which has Alex impatiently chiding his girl to make up her mind over what she's going to do because he's "sick and tired of fooling around with you." The second song, Devil Girl has the singer bemoaning the lure of a wicked woman. By the third song, Lies, it is now Alex who is on the defense licking his wounds stung by the words of a relationship gone wrong.

Alex's cynical humor has always been one of his most endearing, appealing traits, and the CD switches moods suddenly with a rendition of a funeral march followed by the goofy What's Your Sign Girl which has such strained rhymes using the signs of the Zodiac, ("if you're a Virgo we can make it from the start. Miss Leo, you foxy lion heart...") that one is forced to question whether he has either lost his marbles or if he is using his genius to have a laugh on us. It's darn right Brian Wilsonesque which is appropriate since Alex ends up covering a Wilson song, New Girl in School, which is so faithful to the Beach Boys' sound in recreating the vocal harmonies, that it sounds like a great long lost track from the early sixties.

Alex's unpolished guitar playing is inspired throughout the entire disc. From the bluesy Sick and Tired to the rhythm and blues playing on Boplexity, Alex leaves his unique stamp on each of the tunes. He may not be a virtuoso musician but every lick comes from that unique place that can't be repeated nor reproduced by another. His guitar playing forms a stylistic bond with his versatile voice.

The journey Alex takes us on from the beginning of the disc to the end leaves a trail of memories covering the full spectrum of emotions. Anger and sadness, give way to the smile and the wink of the eye underlying the joy of music making. The salvation of one's experience with life's heartbreaks is in the rhythm of words, thoughts, feelings and music. The betrayal and denial of another is given release in the sheer joy of expression. One can get up and dance or turn off the lights and do whatever one does when the light ain't there anymore (that would be hours of sleepless reflection in my case).

A Man Called Destruction is not Alex's masterpiece. It's not exactly going to get a lot of attention from the music buying or radio listening public. But it is another gem, another hour's worth of sublime music making from one artist who has always remained true to his own unique vision. What is the significance of the title? Listening to Alex's early music one can hardly believe he has survived this long. For one who feels things so deeply, certainly self destruction has been a constant companion. Thus it is inspiring to know he has come so far and has been so true for so long. That he is continually performing to a dwindling audience has its advantage (artistic freedom) as well as its inherent downfalls. Entertained? Enlightened? One wishes all music could be this individualistic, goofy, heart wrenching and good.

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OUR THOUGHTS AND HEART ARE COLORED THIS WEEK IN FOND MEMORY OF JULIA "JULIE" BRANTLEY GRUNDHOEFER, SUNDAY'S CHILD, 1965-1995.