Various Artists, International Pop Overthrow: Volume 22, 2019

Album Review

By Henry Lipput

Question: How does one review an amazing three-CD collection of pop music from ten different countries?

Answer: With great pleasure.

International Pop Overthrow: Volume 22 is the latest entry in the long-running International Pop Overthrow series. The first collection was released in 1998 as a single disc and this year's compilation is made up of three discs and 69 tracks by artists from all over the world. Although the International Pop Overthrow festival is essentially a showcase for unsigned bands; over the years, the compilation has featured some signed acts and some who have gone on to be signed. 

International Pop Overthrow (or IPO) is a pop music festival which has been held for the past eighteen years in Los Angeles. It also holds IPOs in various cities around the world including -- and this is really cool -- the Cavern Club in Liverpool. You can get information on the remaining shows this year in New York and Boston on the IPO website.

Volume 22 is a collaboration between Omnivore Recordings and The International Pop Overthrow Music Festival. It includes just about every sub-genre of pop music including power pop, pop/rock, folk/pop, psychedelic pop, garage, indie-rock, and modern rock.

Here's my take on my favorite songs from each of the three discs. Your results may vary.

Disc One: 

The Bishop's Daredevil Stunt Club's "Christine You're  Mean" is power pop in a Raspberries mode. "Sunshine After Rain" from Nick Frater is a real toe-tapper with a lovely pop tune and arrangement. There's some major jangle going on with Danny & the Doorknobs' "Heroine."

The Pecker cut, "They Painted With Their Fingers," has a real cool early Joe Jackson vibe to it.
With the Bird Streets (featuring Jason Faulkner) tune "The Rabbit," we're in Big Star territory. The Kinks, especially their "Everybody's Gonna Be Happy," seem to have been a big influence on Slumberjet's "(Theme from) Our Street."

Popdudes's "Dance With Me Tonight" has a fun early rock and roll arrangement with a swell Sun Sessions guitar solo.

"If You Get Home" by The Lilacs is just good old power pop about a guy worried about when his girlfriend will come back: "I will clean up my room for you / I will be a bridegroom for you." The Wolf Circus indie-pop tune, "I Will Answer," with its perfect pop vocals and a wonderful just-long-enough guitar solo, recalls songs from the first two Marshall Crenshaw albums.

Joanne Hodges is the first woman on this collection and her "Amanda," although a bit denser in sound than other entries in this collection, is a real find.

As I am a sucker for pastiches of Sgt. Pepper / Magical Mystery Tour-era music done well, The Pozers' "The Time and Place" hits the nail right on the walrus’s head. "Sorry" from The Shudders is another indie-pop gem with a top-notch melody.

Disc Two:

The Top Boost and their "Dreaming (featuring Roger Joseph Manning, Jr.)" is a combination of Roger McGuinn's Rickenbacker, a tune like George Harrison's "If I Needed Someone," and some wonderful Beach Boys harmonies.

"She" from The Brothers Steve is another throwback to early Marshall Crenshaw power pop songs like "Rockin' Around in NYC," and The Brothers adapt a line from John Lennon's "God:" "She don't believe in Beatles."

Three Hour Tour show their Beatles influences on the excellent "Lonely Place," with its Lennon-like vocal, Ringo-style drumming, and late-period Harrison guitar. It's a real keeper and a song that could have been on a Cotton Mather album.

The Kinks are back again on Jimmy Haber's upbeat "I Was In Love," a sample of the music hall style that the 60s Brits loved so much (see "When I'm 64") and a song that would have fit easily on The Kinks Something Else album from 1967.

"Turns to Black" is a gorgeous song by The Vinylos with an acoustic guitar lick right out of Lennon's "Julia." I would mention Trotsky Icepick only because it's a really cool band name, but their song "Clutch" is a terrific example of power pop and the band rocks. Emperor Penguin's "Brand New Yesterday" has some outstanding backing vocals and bass line and the lead vocal is nothing to sneeze at.

Sue Hedges from Liverpool brings her sad and beautiful ballad, "I Know Now," to the collection. In case you've forgotten, ballads are pop, too (see McCartney's songs for Cilla Black or almost any Bacharach/David song).

"Joy Comes In The Morning" by The Jeremy Band is a full-throated band attack with twin guitars leading the charge. It would have been a major hit on AM radio in the 60s. Dirty Echoes’ "Mandela" updates a 60s melody with a nifty 80s power pop arrangement.

Disc Three:

"Lord Cornelius Plum" from The Anderson Council has its roots in 60s psych-rock by way of The Dukes of Stratosphear with crunching guitars and (!) mellotron. Danny Wilkerson’s "Too Much of a Good Thing" starts with the sound of Supertramp and then morphs into an excellent take on Emitt Rhodes.

The Magnaphonic song "Daydream" is very much in a Mary Lou Lord vein and features a quiet 60s guitar intro and the delicate double-tracked vocals of Marianne Galassini. "Flat Cat" is another 50s throwback, by way of The Stray Cats, from Kimberly Rew and Lee Cave-Berry, with echoes of Bill Black's slapped bass and Scotty Moore's guitar.

The Expected's "The Riff Song" is another first-rate example of early 80s power pop. On Brenyama's "Rick Moranis" the band's Ramones-like urgency in its playing is combined with vocals that are more shouts than whispers. Where's CBGB when you need it?

Rickenbackers take center stage in an intro that is more than a little Phil Spector on Joe Benoit's "Waiting For Revolution." And there's a bridge that just soars. Butch Young makes a widescreen sound worthy of a John Ford western on "Beautiful Dreamer" that recalls George Harrison on his Cloud Nine album (The song has a lot of the sound of Harrison's guitar playing from that period.) or even the best of ELO.

"Saturday in the Sunshine" by The Last Hurrah has a dancing-around-the-living-room beat with its shimmering guitars and Fab vocals. The song is not so much a copy as an homage to Revolver's "Good Day Sunshine."

International Pop Overthrow: Volume 22 is out now on Omnivore Recordings.

Chris Stamey, New Songs for the 20th Century, 2019

Album Review & Interview

By Henry Lipput

It’s 1962. John F. Kennedy is in the White House; the British Invasion has yet to happen; and the New York Mets have their first regular season. New York City, with its nightclubs, Broadway theaters, and recording studios, is the music capital of the world. And the lights in Times Square glow so brightly that they can be seen all the way to Cleveland.

This is the world to which Chris Stamey, with his remarkable new album, New Songs for the 20th Century, brings us. Stamey is an indie rock pioneer having been in the legendary dbs, worked with the great Alex Chilton, and released more than a few well-received solo albums. But, from a young age, Stamey has kept his ears open to the popular music and show tunes of the 30s, 40s, and 50s. His knowledge and love of this music resonates throughout his new collection.

He has assembled a core group of wonderful singers like Django Haskins, Caitlin Cary (She navigates the shifting sands of love with her vocal on "I Don't Believe In Romance."), Kristen Lambert (She brings a besotted vocal to "And I Love Him."), Millie McGuire (Her "I Fall In Love So Easily" sounds like a lovely solo number from a Broadway show.), and Nnenna Freelon (whose Sarah Vaughan-like take on "Occasional Shivers" is a standout track). I also have a soft spot for Brett Harris and "On the Street Where We Used to Live" because it reminds me of my time living on the Upper West Side and all of the changes to the neighborhood I've heard about. (Is Sal's Pizza still on Broadway?)

Stamey also put together The ModRec Orchestra (named after his home studio Modern Recording) for this recording, a group of musicians that would have made Nelson Riddle jealous that includes Bill Frisell, Nels Cline, and Peter Holsapple. And Branford Marsalis is the featured soloist on the opening track "Manhattan Melody (That's My New York)."

I had the opportunity to interview Chris Stamey by email and ask him about New Songs for the 20th Century and his love of the music from the Great American Songbook.

Chris Stamey by Daniel Coston

Henry Lipput: Hi Chris. You wrote, arranged, mixed, and produced your new album New Songs for the 20th Century. It's an incredible achievement. Congratulations.

Chris Stamey: Thanks!

Henry: You've said the impetus for the songs you've written for the album was all of the sheet music with songs by the likes of the Gershwins, Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin that arrived with a piano at your home. Was this the first time you heard this music or were you familiar with it already and it just sparked your interest in writing new songs in a similar vein?

Chris: It was the music I grew up with -- that, and Chopin, Brahms, Bach, the romantic classics, as well. My father was an amateur pianist and regularly played (and sang) the Great American Songbook tunes at the piano after dinner, especially those from the 40s, WWII era, "I'll Be Seeing You," "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes." And my family went to local theater performances a lot when I was very young.

Henry: The new songs you've written are really terrific and the arrangements have a wonderful 1950s feel to them. How familiar were you with the pop and jazz arrangements that were used during that decade for cover versions of famous songs by singers like Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald?

Chris: I studied them over the last few years, both on my own and in some university courses at UNC here in Chapel Hill. Reading charts, listening to recordings, attending concerts. I've also been writing a lot of string arrangements for pop and rock songs over the last 15 years, for things I was producing or mixing, and was "learning by doing," "learning on the job."

I think the arrangements for "Occasional Shivers" and "I Didn't Mean to Fall in Love with You" on this record were the first successful ones I wrote in that 50s style, and I had help finishing those from composer Allen Anderson, here in Chapel Hill -- although the main ideas were all mine. But I'm no expert. I just dived in.

As I went along, I was able to do this in a more minimal way, for example, the arrangement for "It's Been a While" has very little happening to get in the way of the great live take by the band. But those few spots, mostly viola, make all the difference (at least to me). Surgical strikes are ideal. The arrangement for "I Am Yours" (one of the few "modern"-style songs, harmonically) also has these relatively minimal string lines, just underscoring.

However, another latecomer to the record was "I Don't Believe in Romance;" and, although those massed violin textures are simple, they are bold, simple, loud as can be in the mix, and a crucial part of the construction. So, I guess it just depends. Caitlin's vocal reminds me of (yikes) Julie Andrews there, and I wanted the parts to be as confident and forthright as she sounded.

Photo courtesy of Chris Stamey

In a certain way, this kind of arranging came from a desire to create mixes in a different way than I've been doing for the last three decades. When mixing a vocal pop or rock record, you hope to have a good song, a good singer, a good basic rhythm track, all that.

Then you shape and integrate these things into a memorable listening experience, clearing out places where they bump up against each other or cloud each other. But often the mix calls for some "detailing" to make it dramatically successful. Perhaps a quiet echo effect, triplets that trail over the end of a section. Perhaps a sudden breakdown, where the drums or guitars disappear for a bar. Perhaps volume rides, where crescendos or decrescendos are created with automation.

But I was finding I was reaching into the same bag of tricks too often, I was feeling a bit boxed in (if you can be boxed in by a bag??) and I wanted to find a way to do this, instead, with orchestral instruments, instead, with exact voicings (pitches / timbres) that could slide into drums / guitars / keys / bass, to get more surgical and precise with the ways I was "highlighting" the emotion or the intent of a song and performance.

It also has to do with just temperament: The more pure pitches (that live between the frets and between the keys of well-tempered instruments) make music resonate in the brain better. Strings and winds can make microscopic adjustments on the fly to make ensemble chords, and mixes, soar! (Good guitarists also do this all the time, with subtle string-bending, finger vibrato, and tuning adjustments, but it's so hard to constantly work around those well-tempered metal strips glued into the neck.)

So my arranging is coming from that: What is the most minimal thing that can be done to bring out the power of the song, for the very first time it's heard? Often this has to do with the "hinges," or moments of change, in a composition, places where it is transitioning from a verse to a chorus, from an instrumental section to a bridge, etc. Sometimes the hinges need some oil, I guess?

And it also has to do with learning / relearning how to write music on paper. This stuff was all scored. In fact, a companion songbook, called also New Songs for the 20th Century, is coming out in the next few weeks. Right now it will be just for sale at my web site www.chrisstamey.com and then soon on Amazon I think.

In our modern life, with ever-decreasing attention spans, you only get that "first listen." There is no time for the music to reveal its subtleties by repetition, usually, unless it's basically worked, dramatically, the first time.

So a mixer or arranger needs to make the song performance as clear as can be. It's the same principle as in writing prose: A well-crafted sentence should be grammatically correct, but its sense also should be clear on the "first read."

I'm still more comfortable writing for strings than for massed winds, but I'm trying to learn more about Big Band arranging now. I've been reading Nestico and Thad Jones charts and listening to Count Basie and Ellington recently.

Henry: You use a lot of fantastic singers on New Songs for the 20th Century. Did you write with specific singers in mind or did you look for singers after the songs had already been written?

Chris: I usually did have singers in mind. Kirsten Lambert, Millie McGuire, Skylar Gudasz, Django Haskins, Caitlin Cary, Nnenna Freelon, Brett Harris, Matt McMichaels, and the rest all have different strengths, and it was beyond inspirational to have them as willing accomplices for this. I was grateful that they brought great chops, excellent pitch, swing, diction. They are all amazing, and I'm so grateful.

Django Haskins by Soleil Konkel

Millie McGuire by Zach Stamey

Kristen Lambert by Addison Sharp

Nnenna Freelon by Alan Mercer

Henry: You were musical director for the amazing Big Star Third concert for which you put together singers and musicians. Do you feel that it prepared you for what you needed to accomplish with your new album?

Chris: I learned a lot about what would work, live, in very pragmatic terms, in the best possible way: making mistakes on the fly, changing things up from night to night, under pressure, seeing what worked! Folks like [Big Star's Third original arranger] Carl Marsh and Kronos Quartet were very patient with me, and I slowly got better as I wrote more and more charts for those concerts.

Henry: Many of the songs by the great songwriters that showed up with your piano were originally used in Broadway shows. When I first listened to your album, I thought it could be songs for a musical for which the book had yet to be written. Have you given any thought to putting your songs on the stage?

Chris: After I had written the first batch of these songs, I constructed a plot around them and recorded a one-hour-long "holiday radio musical" called Occasional Shivers that has been broadcast nationally on a lot of stations around the winter holidays for the last several years. Check it out. It's available as a podcast (free) on iTunes, year round.

But it was "horse before the cart." I had most of its songs first, then had to shape a plot around them! It was tricky. Like a lot of things in my life, I jumped into the deep part of the pool without knowing much at all about drama or plot construction; I keep doing this, not sure why!

I thought I was writing "jazz standards" when I was sitting at the piano, but then after a while I realized the obvious: that so many of those standard songs came from Broadway shows in the first place, before the jazzers got a hold of them. So yes, these recordings of them are somewhat "show-tune" style. But I think the biggest thing for me was just writing on piano instead of on guitar. It's a better slide rule for chords beyond the triad.

There are great guitars on this record, by Bill Frisell, Nels Cline, Scott Sawyer, Brent Lambert, and some by me as well. But there are no rhythm guitars at the core of these songs (I think?). I was thinking specifically about the sound of pre-Beatles radio. (Although Les Paul was doing some great things with his guitars behind Mary Ford then, and having hits, of course, then.)

Although we've talked about arranging with these songs, I was, first and foremost, trying to find a different harmonic language in the basic chord progressions, different from what I'd done before.

Something Mitch Easter used to say about the Beatles when we were kids -- and I think he is right -- is that you could tell every time they learned a new chord, because they immediately used it in the next few songs. You can chart their widening chord knowledge, bit by bit, as the albums were made. Sometimes the covers they did revealed where they learned these new chords or progressions, even.

There are places in these songs on this record where I’m trying to find the new. The change from Fm to Em on the 11th bar of "Lover, Can You Hear Me?" or "On an Evening Such as This," where it goes from Eb maj7 to B (natural) min7 . . . Or the chromaticism of "The Woman Who Walks the Sea" where it resolves a half-step higher or lower than expected . . .

I was excited when I discovered moments like this on the keyboard. This is more what this record is about, to me: my search for more impactful ways to vary the harmonic content in order to make key ("hinge") moments of the lyric have a corresponding melodic impact. To try to find a closer connection between words and melody, and to try to travel down paths that I, personally, have not trod before. It's all about the learning. The arranging is totally fun, but the basic song ingredients (melody, words, harmonization) are ultimately more compelling, to me, than the timbres that shape them. Make sense?

Henry: Thank you, Chris. Good luck with the new album.

New Songs for the 20th Century is out today on Omnivore Recordings.

Bird Streets, Bird Streets, 2018

Album Review

By Henry Lipput

For his new album, Bird Streets, the New York-based songwriter and musician, John Brodeur, reached out to his friend, the producer and multi-instrumentalist, Jason Falkner. The result is indie-pop gold with guitars, melodies, and vocals that, as the album's Bandcamp page says: "draws liberally on the music of decades past without being bluntly nostalgic."

For nearly 20 years Brodeur has released several solo albums, fronted the rock trios The Suggestions  and Maggie Mayday, and worked as a touring and studio musician. Faulkner, of course, was a founding member of power-pop legends Jellyfish and is the one-man band behind such solo records as 1996's Author Unknown. He produced the Bird Streets album and co-wrote most of the songs with Brodeur.

Two of my favorite songs on Bird Streets are about breakups. There's the break-up-happening-right-now of "Thanks For Calling." It's an upbeat tune with echoes of the Mersey Beat sound, and there's also a late-period solo Alex Chilton guitar riff in the mix. "So the next time you hook up / With an old friend / Keep it a secret, keep me in the dark," sings Brodeur in a warm, friendly voice that sounds not unlike Matthew Caws of Nada Surf. "So you're kind of a thing now? / Thanks for calling / I would have been better off never knowing / But you had to tell me everything."

The post-breakup song is "Stop To Breathe" which has the fantastic dueling guitar sound that was so much a part of Falkner's post-Jellyfish band, the indie supergroup, The Grays (which also included Jon Brion, Buddy Judge, and Dan McCarroll) and their great 1994 one-shot Ro Sham Bo album. 

In "Stop To Breathe" an old girlfriend keeps coming back into his life in unexpected ways: "You  must be alive / 'cause you cashed the check" and "Seven months before I heard a thing / Then I see the ring I gave you / In a Third Street pawn-shop window." Then there's a big chorus "Drop your weapons and retreat, Carrie / I'm not the enemy / And you're a question mark / When an answer's what I need, Carrie." With Luther Russell brought on board, an awesome three-guitar face-off takes off that might just remind you of the end of Abbey Road.

"Betting On The Sun" is a terrific pop song with jangling guitars that could have found a place on Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend. Miranda Lee Richards and Maesa Pullman provide a heavenly chorus on the lovely "Spaceship." And the ballad "Heal" compares love to a drug: "I came to you looking for relief / Hollow-eyed and shaking like a leaf / You were safe and warm, that's why I stayed / Praying that the rush would never fade / Anesthetized /And hypnotized."  

"Direction," with its swell lead bass line and a crunchy guitar solo, tells the story of a sort-of girlfriend who's never quite around when she's supposed to be: "Three in the afternoon on a Monday / You're in the bathroom again, with a friend / And everyone can hear you / You fix yourself up  / And make your way back to the table / Everyone shuts up / And pretends nothing happened." 

Bird Streets is out now on Omnivore Recordings. Bird Streets play The Saint in Asbury Park with Cliff Westfall on Thursday, November 8th.

Raspberries, Pop Art Live, 2017

Album Review

By Henry Lipput

In the early '70s, long before he wrote and directed Say Anything, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous, Cameron Crowe was 15 and reviewing records for an underground newspaper. In the liner notes for Pop Art Live he remembers hearing the first Raspberries album: "'Go All The Way' opened the album, and Raspberries' career, with a sonic knock to the jaw."

Judging by Pop Art Live, a recording of Raspberries' November 26, 2004, concert at Cleveland's House of Blues, the band was still able to deliver "a sonic knock to the jaw." This time it's with the opening track "I Wanna Be With You" which kicks things off with a bang. (They followed this show with a successful reunion tour in 2005.)

Nearly thirty years after they last played together, the  founding members of the band -- Eric Carmen Wally Bryson, David Smalley, and Jim Bonfanti -- got back to perform live versions of songs from all four of their classic albums as well as covers by The Who (an "I Can't Explain" rave-up) and The Beatles (mid-period Fab Four gems like "Ticket To Ride," Baby's In Black," and "No Reply").

It was a fabulous, exciting concert and the recording sounds great (long-time Raspberries associate Tommy Allen did the mixing). Obviously, these power pop pioneers lost nothing in the intervening years. Carmen is in terrific voice, Bryson also provides fine lead vocals as well a lot of amazing guitar workouts (He pretty much set the template, didn't he?), and the Smalley and Bonfanti rhythm section rock the House.

"Don't Want To Say Goodbye" is a major live standout as is the lovely piano-driven "Starting Over;" and the wonderful, multi-part "Overnight Sensation (Hit Record)" owes more than a little to the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations" (They even reproduce the transistor radio portion of the song). There's also Smalley's "It Seems So Easy" with some nifty Byrds-like Rickenbacker playing and the first song the band ever recorded, "Come Around And See Me." Raspberries started off their first album with "Go All The Way," and they end the concert with an absolutely blow-out version of the song.

Some of my favorite Raspberries songs have always been the ones in which Carmen channels solo Paul McCartney like "If You Change Your Mind" and, especially, "I Saw The Light." It's great to hear these live versions.

Near the end of the concert, Carmen acknowledges the reason they sound so good is because they have a little help from some friends: Paul Sidoti, Jennifer Lee, Billy Sullivan, and Derek Braunschweiger (known as The Overdubs). "They're playing all of the parts we played on our records," says Carmen, "but can't do with just four people." They help the four original members to make a marvelous sound all night.

The 2-CD / digital release of Pop Art Live is out now on Omnivore Recordings. A special-edition 3-LP set will be available later this year.

The Legal Matters, Conrad, 2016

Album Review

By Henry Lipput

There are songs that make you smile as soon as you hear them; and there are more than a few of those songs on Conrad, the new release from The Legal Matters.

The Legal Matters hail from Detroit, Michigan; and Conrad is their second album. It was clear from their 2014 self-titled debut that the band's major influences were power pop icons like Big Star, Matthew Sweet, and Teenage Fanclub. Legal Matters have covered Teenage Fanclub's "Don't Look Back" and included it in a sampler that made the rounds last summer. With great tunes and terrific harmonies, that first album was a delight for power pop fans. And, like Teenage Fanclub, a Legal Matters album contains contributions from three songwriters: Chris Richards, Andy Reed, and Keith Klingensmith.

"Anything," the opening track written by Richards, is a stunner about a guy trying to tell his best girl he'll do anything to make her happy. It's a great tune with terrific harmonies and backing vocals and a middle eight and guitar break that lift the song into sublime territory.

In "More Birds Less Bees," a conversation takes place between a couple; but the guy doesn't quite get what's going on (It may be one of those "Let's just be friends" talks): "But it seems she's talking more birds and less bees / and I don't really know what it means / but she's making me weak at the knees." The melody grows and grows and there's a really nice mid-60s AM radio sound to the song -- the Turtles perhaps?

In addition to those two song,s Richards also wrote the short, sweet, hymn-like "Lull And Bye" that ends with some lovely Beach Boys-style harmonies.

Andy Reed's "I'm Sorry Love" and "She Called Me To Say" bring more of a big guitar sound to the Legal Matters mix. These songs also bring up one of The Legal Matters' other big influences, especially when it comes to harmonies: The Posies, notably that band's Dear 23 album.

The acoustic "The Cool Kid" can be seen as Reed's take on Big Star's "Thirteen." Both are about teenagers who don't quite fit in, both trying to win the heart of a girl. There's also a bit of Ben Folds Five's "Underground:" "I was never cool in school / I'm sure you don't remember me."

If "The Cool Kid" is Conrad's Alex Chilton song, "Pull My String," Keith Klingensmith's contribution to the album, is the Chris Bell song (as well as the song that highlights their love of Teenage Fanclub). In addition, it's where everything that makes The Legal Matters such a much-listen for power pop lovers like me can be found in just one song.

Conrad is out now on Omnivore Recordings.

Big Star, Complete Third, 2016

Album Review

By Henry Lipput

When Big Star released their first album, #1 Record, in 1972, the band consisted of Chris Bell, Alex Chilton, Jody Stephens, and Andy Hummel. In 1974, Radio City came out; and Chilton, Stephens, and Hummel were Big Star. Recording sessions for another album began in the fall of 1974, and Chilton and Stephens were the last men standing.

When recording was completed on what would be the last Big Star album, it still didn’t have a title; and it didn’t have a track listing (although producer Jim Dickinson and Chilton had agreed on a first and last song). Dickinson and John Fry (engineer on this recording and producer on the band's previous two outings) put together a song sequence and made a test pressing of the album. They visited record companies across the country to try and drum up interest in the disc but were met with comments like, "I don’t have to listen to that again, do I?"

Normally, this would signal the end of the road for a record. However, Big Star had developed a small, but devoted, following; and, in 1978, around the time that Alex Chilton began his new career as a singer of rock and punk material that had little connection with his earlier music, the indie label PVC put out the album which was simply titled Third.

In the '90s, as people who had heard the album started to create a buzz about it, Rykodisc released the album as Third/Sister Lovers (both Chilton and Stephens had been dating sisters at the time the album was recorded). Using the same master tapes as PVC, Rykodisc's track listing was slightly different (and both are different than the test pressing), and they used the other songs that had been mastered as bonus tracks.

In 2009, Rhino Records released the 4-CD Keep An Eye On The Sky box set which chronicled Big Star's career including recordings made by the band's leaders Chris Bell and Alex Chilton before they teamed up. The box also included some demos for songs from Third, many of which were being heard by fans for the first time.

And this is were Omnivore Recordings comes in. In 2011, on Record Store Day, the company released copies of the test pressing that Dickinson and Fry had put together. Rough mixes and demos came along on the soundtrack for the Big Star film Nothing Can Hurt Me and the Record Store Day "Jesus Christ" EP (a song from Third and Chilton‘s Christmas song).

Having spent 10 years searching for more demos, mixes, and outtakes from Third, Omnivore has just released Complete Third, a three-disc, 69-song collection -- every recording from Third known to exist including 29 songs that have never been heard.

The box also has a booklet with an essay by long-time rock journalist and Big Star fan, Bud Scoppa, as well as comments by Jody Stephens and fans of the band and the album such as Ken Stringfellow (of The Posies and who, along with Chilton and Stephens, was part of the Big Star reunion in the '90s) and Chris Stamey (of The db's and producer of some of Chilton's records in the '70s).

Complete Third is a comprehensive listen to an album that was initially dismissed and is now revered as a classic. It's obvious that a lot of care has gone into this project. All of the music, demos, mixes, and masters that were recorded more than forty years ago, sound terrific.

The first disc eases listeners into the work. We hear most of the songs that will be used on the album through Chilton's acoustic guitar and voice demos. It's a nice first look at songs that would become dark, but still beautiful, in mixes and the final masters (Disc 2 sequences mixes for "Kanga Roo," "Holocaust," and "Big Black Car" together). Throughout, there are also lovely, positive songs like "Take Care," "Thank You Friends," and the gorgeous "Blue Moon" and Stephens's "For You."

Disc 2 is made up of rough mixes by Dickinson and Fry. You can hear the difference between mixes and masters in "Oh, Dana" (Dickinson did the rough mix). An even better example of how things progressed is "Big Black Car" which, over the course of the three discs, is presented as a Chilton acoustic demo, a demo with the band, a Dickinson rough mix, a Fry rough mix, and a final master.

The sessions for Third have been described as chaotic by many of those who participated, and this is made clear in "Pre-Downs," an edited version of the nearly 30-minute banging and guitar noodling that would become "Downs." There's also Chilton and his girlfriend Lesa's take on The Beatles' "I’m So Tired" and Chilton performing "Baby Strange" by T-Rex.

The third disc is made up of the final masters. Omnivore based the order of the masters in this set on their test pressing release but also included the other masters (many of which Rykodisc used as bonus tracks). You can also sequence it yourself.

Complete Third is out now on Omnivore Recordings.