Send "Alex Chilton " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 By 1970, Alex Chilton was barely old enough to vote but already enough of a music biz veteran to be completely jaded by the industry. His short tenure in the Box Tops produced two million-selling hits, "The Letter" and "Cry Like a Baby", but the group's sound and direction were determined almost exclusively by producers Chips Moman and Dan Penn, who rarely diverged from the group's R&B-laced rock'n'roll. They chose almost all of the Box Tops' songs, dictated how they should be sung, and relegated Chilton's own compositions to hastily recorded B-sides, denying the singer not only his creative freedom but potential royalties as well. Whether this was the heavy hand of a svengali or the harried influence of a producer-cum-babysitter is debatable, but after an aborted tour of Europe, the Box Tops fell apart.Free from the demands of that hit group, Chilton holed up in Memphis' Ardent Studios with producer/founder John Fry and engineer Terry Manning to record a batch of his own songs. The sessions were casual and low-key, resulting in a full album of material that was never released. Instead, Chilton formed a new band, called Big Star, which translated British power pop to American shores. But those 1970 sessions became lore among Big Star fans, passed around as rumors or bootlegs until 1996, when Ardent released them as 1970. That collection has since gone out of print, and now Omnivore Records has reissued it with bonus tracks, following up last year's excellent white-label edition of Big Star's Third. This music represents the midpoint between the Box Tops and Big Star almost too literally, as Chilton volleys between blues-rock rave-ups like "All I Really Want Is Money" and softly sung pop ballads like "The EMI Song (Smile for Me)". The transitions can be jarring, especially as he switches between his low, gruff vocals and his mod-ish falsetto. It's hard to believe it's the same human being singing those songs. And yet, on some level, this collection may be one of the purest expressions of Chilton's personality-- not only his dreamy ruminations but also his coarse humor. According to the new liner notes by Bob Mehr, Chilton made fun of Moman and other producers for being out of touch with current sounds, specifically the British Invasion. This mocking spirit extends to "All I Really Want Is Money" and "I Wish I Could Meet Elvis", which seem to take the piss out of the Box Tops....full text |
| Omnivorerecordings |
| ree Again: The “1970″ Sessions are the first solo recordings from a post-Box Tops/pre-Big Star Alex Chilton. The album, mixed and engineered by Terry Manning, will be released as a 20-track CD featuring six previously unreleased songs, and 12-track LP. The first 1,500 LPs will be pressed on limited-edition clear vinyl (black vinyl thereafter).The album will also be available digitally at all major online retailers, as well as the Omnivore Recordings webstore. A special Omnivore webstore exclusive bundles 500 clear vinyl LPs with a bonus 7″ that includes the original and demo versions of the previously unreleased “All We Ever Got From Them Was Pain.”...full text |
| Newsok |
| Alex Chilton was already a pop star at age 18 in the summer of '69, having sung on four hit singles by the Box Tops (“The Letter,” “Cry Like a Baby,” “Soul Deep,” “Sweet Cream Ladies”) in two short years. But he hadn't written any of those songs, and his Memphis-based band was being packaged and managed very much like the prefabricated Monkees. He yearned to break out on his own and record his own material, and began working on what was intended to be his first solo album as the Box Tops disintegrated in late 1969. Most of those songs would not see the light of day until the mid-'80s on compilation albums, and he would soon go on to form Big Star with newfound collaborator Chris Bell — the most influential American Brit-pop-influenced band you never heard of — in 1972. “Free Again” contains all of those identity-searching pre-Big Star tracks, from the country twang of the title cut to the blues-rocking “Come On Honey,” the Southern-fried strut of “I Can Dig It” (he was a Memphis boy, after all), and the wonderfully yearning “The EMI Song (Smile for Me),” which foreshadowed the kind of heavily Beatles-influenced music he would write with Bell and on his own during the short but sweet life of Big Star....full text |
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