It feels like a bit of a cheat to use the 1992 Year of the Month to write an article about the work of an artist who died in 1978, but it’s not my fault Chris Bell’s I Am the Cosmos was released more than thirteen years after his death, rescued from the dustbin of history by Rykodisc. Plus, I wanted to make sure I could still complete the natural trilogy of writing about this, #1 Record (still technically to come), and Radio City. (I’m not as big a fan of Third/Sister Lovers as many critics, but more importantly, it’s just a dramatic stylistic shift from the first two records, and this one is much more at home with them.)
That’s what Bell’s most known for, after all: Being the other songwriter and singer for Big Star. Alex Chilton and Bell had known each other for some time, and after leaving the Box Tops, Chilton asked Bell to join him as a songwriting duo a la Simon & Garfunkel; Bell declined, but invited Chilton to a performance of his band Icewater (also containing bassist Andy Hummel and drummer Jody Stephens); Chilton was impressed by their music and shared a song he wrote with them (“Watch the Sunrise,” which would make #1 Record), and they invited him to join the band. Thus was Big Star born.
The recording of #1 Record was fraught with personal difficulties between the band, and Bell temporarily left afterward. He rejoined to work on the songs for Radio City, but left again several months later. (Although officially he left the band before recording, his voice and influence are clearly present on some of the songs, such as “O My Soul” and “Back of a Car.”) Bell began working on his solo material in this time, occasionally playing with other musicians, while also working in his father’s restaurant; his struggles with drugs, alcohol, and depression continued beyond his time in Big Star and through his brief time on this earth.
While #1 Record and Radio City are of a piece stylistically, there are some subtle differences, which I now realize I’ve written about already:
Radio City is the second and more mature album; much of #1 Record is given to more plainspoken, straightforward sentiments (think “My Life Is Right” or “Don’t Lie to Me”, for example), while Radio City has more ambivalence, more opacity, a little more willingness to send a kiss-off (“Life Is White”), although, to be clear, the difference is not as pronounced as this comparison sounds.
I think the real distinction is that Radio City has more variety and complexity in the songwriting and musical style itself, while still unmistakably being the same band of #1 Record. (Third / Sister Lovers, by comparison, is of a decidedly different sound than the first two.)
I bring this up again because Bell’s lone solo album speaks to his absence from the band on the second record. It’s similarly straightforward as #1 Record, with a mix of power-pop and balladry and the kind of lovelorn lyrics that marked a number of Big Star’s early songs– and another document of Bell’s gifts as a songwriter, as the whole album is quite lovely.
The album kicks off with the title track, a mid-tempo rocker with the jangle Big Star was known for, and those lovelorn lyrics come up right away: “Every night I tell myself I am the cosmos / I am the wind / But that don’t get you back again.” Then the drums kick in and the song starts rocking. It sets a great pace for the rest of the album, which is of a piece with it– rockers with some of Bell’s signature jangle and production, clearly influenced by the garage-rock of the 60s and bands like the Kinks, with the kind of lonely, searching lyrics that characterized Bell’s work. (It makes an interesting contrast to the post-Big Star work of Chilton, whose music went in an entirely different direction: influenced as much by the local music of his hometown Memphis and adopted hometown New Orleans, a mishmash and deconstruction of jazz, blues, rockabilly, country, and soul; what Robert Christgau described as “bent cabaret-rock.”)
Bell had a growing interest in Christianity in his later days, most prominently reflected in the chorus of second track “Better Save Yourself”: “You should’ve given your love to Jesus / It wouldn’t do you no harm.” Although I suppose the idea at the end of the chorus is closer to how I see it than to how many Christians view salvation: “You’ve been sitting on your ass / Trying to find some grace / But you better save yourself / If you want to see his face.”
A lot of the album is of a piece with “I Am The Cosmos,” although a few songs are more up-tempo and upbeat, if of the same lyrical themes. “Get Away” and “I Don’t Know” are great up-tempo examples, quite clearly from the same guy who wrote and sang “In the Street.” In between “Get Away” and “Better Save Yourself” in terms of sound, tempo, and style is “Make a Scene.” “I Got Kinda Lost” might be the most fun song on the album, and “Fight at the Table”‘s rhythm and melody make it feel like the kind of rock song that has always existed somewhere– albeit with a bit of a funky intro that sounds like something Alex Chilton might have come up with post-Big Star.
I think my favorite song is “You and Your Sister,” released as the B-side to the title track– the lone single released during Bell’s lifetime. It’s a simple, straightforward strings-tinged ballad, emotionally open and plainspoken, and utterly gorgeous. It even works as a piece with “Thirteen,” down to the critical family member (“Won’t you tell your dad, ‘Get off my back’?” on “Thirteen”; “Your sister says that I’m no good / I’d reassure her if I could” here). The chorus speaks to those plainspoken sentiments: “All I want to do / Is to spend some time with you / So I can hold you, hold you.” And it’s a collaborative effort with old friends: Pre-Big Star bandmate Bill Cunningham arranged the strings on the track, and Alex Chilton returns to provide some backing vocals. Whereas most of the album is a touch noisy and a touch dark– though nowhere near the level of the chaotic and destructive Third— this is his most straightforward, crystal-clear song, and it’s a thing of beauty.
“Look Up” is similarly less rocking and more gentle in its production and style, and closer “Though I Know She Lies” is the kind of quiet closer that makes sense given the first two Big Star albums, the first with “ST 100/6,” and the second with “Morpha Too” and “I’m in Love With a Girl,” and it’s quite pretty as well.
I don’t have a lot to say about most of the individual songs, but I like the entire album. It’s very much in spirit with the first two Big Star albums; it’s pretty and jangly but more interesting and complex than that description; it carries Bell’s melancholy in its DNA but is still a fun listen. It’s a real lost gem.
Chris Bell died in a single-car accident on December 27, 1978, just two and a half weeks shy of his 28th birthday. In 1992, Rykodisc Records compiled Bell’s solo recordings into this album and named it after the A-side of his lone single. It’s a lovely record from a pop genius who was taken far too soon from us, one that suggests he was at least as responsible, and possibly more so, than Alex Chilton for the sound of those early Big Star albums, the ones that inspired bands like R.E.M., The Replacements, and Teenage Fanclub to name them essential works. I for one am grateful for it.
(The versions of I Am the Cosmos on Spotify seem to come from re-releases of the album that add a lot of bonus tracks and alternate recordings. The album proper ends with “Though I Know She Lies”; the original Rykodisc release also included three bonus tracks, the “slow version” of “I Am The Cosmos” and the “country version” and “acoustic version” of “You and Your Sister.”)