Big Star Complete Third, Alan Courtis and Cyrus Pireh Coils on Malbec
Big Star
Complete Third
(Omnivore)
After two stellar power-pop albums that would prove to be highly influential, the Memphis band Big Star was down to frontman Alex Chilton and drummer Jody Stephens, having lost Chris Bell and Andy Hummel along the way. In late 1974 and early 1975, the group’s third masterpiece Third (a.k.a. Sister Lovers) was created, despite conscious attempts by Chilton to “wreak havoc” (according to producer Jim Dickinson) on certain sessions, which reveal themselves on songs like “Kangaroo,” a distinctively peculiar and deceptively bleak-sounding love song that feels like it’s going to self-destruct.
Emotions swing wildly; there’s the reverb-drenched, bleary-eyed “Big Black Car,” the profoundly depressing “Holocaust,” the flamboyant rock-stomper “You Can’t Have Me” and the spry “Stroke It Noel” enhanced with nimble strings.
Third has had a strange history. Chilton didn’t really consider it to be a Big Star album, and numerous versions of the album exist with varying tracks and sequences. This writer’s opinion is that, by a wide margin, the best version of Third is the 14-track sequence (skip the bonus tracks) released by Rykodisc in 1992, and that’s honestly good enough for most Big Star fans.
For the superfan, who just can’t get enough, there’s the 69-track, 3-CD set Complete Third; it offers 29 previously unreleased recordings from the Third sessions and is split into three volumes to break down the process of creation: “Demos to Sessions to Roughs,” “Roughs to Demos,” and “Final Masters.”
Fans may be tickled by the curiosities, including the covers of the Beatles’ “I’m So Tired,” the Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby” and the Velvet Underground’s “After Hours” sung by Chilton’s girlfriend, Lesa Aldridge. If anything is illuminating about Complete Third, it’s the presence of Aldridge, which was minimized for the final album; a case could be made that she was more than merely a muse.
Third is such a nearly flawless, endlessly replayable album (the Rykodisc version, that is) that it’s odd to hear it in states that aren’t so perfect, and the sequence presented on the “Final Masters” disc doesn’t do the album justice. This writer is glad this exists as an archival document, but although it may be the “complete” Third, it’s not the best Third.
Alan Courtis and Cyrus Pireh
Coils on Malbec
(Shinkoyo)
There’s a great temptation for musicians to cultivate a gear fetish and to collect or covet fancy and expensive instruments, sound processing devices and recording equipment. However, as the musicians Alan Courtis and Cyrus Pireh point out, with regards to their new, collaborative album Coils on Malbec, “There is already music all around us.”
To create Coils on Malbec, released digitally and on wine-colored vinyl, Courtis and Pireh used coils to receive electromagnetic vibrations that were surrounding them in the air. The duo connected these coils together in a shallow bowl of Argentinian Malbec wine to make unusual sounds and then processed and edited the sounds together to make two long tracks.
The first piece “Coils on Malbec” features incessant wispy sounds and doleful hums, evoking rushing river rapids with chunks of sharp ice, plus the sounds of electronic circuits disconnecting, looped methodically with persistence. This writer favors the second track, “Malbec on Coils,” which offers a disturbing rumble and a whistling noise, which resembles a synthetic avalanche that could be a compelling film score; in the middle of the track, the sound drops out abruptly, leading to soft, bristling static sounds.
Alan Courtis, also known as Anla Courtis, is a prolific Argentinian musician known for daring, non-traditional sound-making methods who gained notoriety for his work in the extremely bizarre and uncategorizable outfit Reynols. Cyrus Pireh, from Illinois, despite having graduate degrees in music composition, considers himself an anarchist and strives to take apart the hierarchy in both society and music.
Together, they have taken this premise to pluck vibrations from thin air and douse circuits in wine to create unsettling soundtracks. Would the project have sounded less interesting if it didn’t have this unique method behind it? Maybe so, but even with a revealed process, the difficult sounds themselves provide enough intrigue.