Radio City, along with its predecessor, #1 Record, is one of those albums that music enthusiasts and critics all rightly revere, citing its influential qualities, reveling in its blissful pop melodies, etc... Being an avid reader of online music reviews, I felt quite familiar with Big Star before ever listening to their music. Yet I was reminded when listening to the band in the car with my girlfriend that outside of us hardcore rock music buffs, very few people have heard of them. So while Big Star is no doubt overrated by some (isn't every band?), they still deserve to be heard by a wider audience, especially since despite their lack of commercial success, they were no doubt a commercially-oriented band, and thus really aren't that hard to get into compared to a lot of my other lesser-known favorites.
As for the music itself, it is filled with jangly guitars and big hooks, and is no doubt the forerunner for various indie-alternative-pop bands of the 80s and 90s. Lead singer/songwriter Alex Chilton was not just a great tunesmith, but sings with a strained vulnerability that adds an undercurrent of unrest to the songs even while the guitars chime brightly. As a result, the band excels at rocking out (the near 6-minute jam "O My Soul") yet the best song here, "September Gurls," and arguably the best of their career, is a sweet, unforgettable mid-tempo ballad. So if you haven't heard Big Star, get this album! I'm reviewing this one because I was already very familiar with their debut, #1 Record, which is even better, being more diverse and featuring more tear-jerking ballads. On CD, the two albums are commonly packaged together, which is so much the better, since they're basically the same album anyways.
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