The driving force behind Big Star is, and to a certain extent always has been, Alex Chilton, aka The Imp of the Perverse. Alex does pretty much what he wants to. If you’re of a like mind, you’re usually welcome to come along for the ride. Otherwise, stay the fuck out of his way. For the longest time he pretty much ignored the Big Star legacy as so much nostalgia – perhaps rightly so – but legions of geeks (like your humble correspondent) just wouldn’t let it go. Two of the biggest bars to a Big Star reunion were the retirement from music of bassist Andy Hummel and the untimely death of guitarist/singer/songwriter/pop proponent Chris Bell. Looming over the top of such seemingly insurmountable hurdles, though, was the fact that Alex couldn’t be arsed to do it. No Alex, no Big Star (obviously, since Bell had shuffled off this mortal coil and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible).

Fast forward to sometime around 1993. Alex and drummer/songwriter/singer Jody Stephens (and possibly Andy Hummel, although the record seems a bit murky on that count) were approached to perform a one-off show as, yes, Big Star. Much to everyone’s surprise, Alex agreed. Stephens suggested Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow of The Posies as replacements for the missing elements, mostly on the strength of their covers of Bell’s “I Am The Cosmos” and Big Star’s “Feel” – both of which are pretty amazing in the way they capture the feeling of the originals without being utterly slavish about it. Good choice there.

The one-off show recorded, Europe beckoned for a few festival gigs. A sprinkling of further American gigs were booked in 2000, including one in Seattle on my birthday (with an acoustic Posies set from Jon & Ken AND one from a relatively unknown Death Cab For Cutie opening).

Jump ahead to, uh, now. Well, probably sometime last year, but fuck it. Relatively recently, Alex decided that recording a new Big Star album wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Thousands of record geeks creamed their jeans in anticipation.

The result of his decision is In Space. Given all the build-up, it would have been nearly impossible for this recording, made some thirty years after the last effort by the band (discounting posthumous live sets, a “best of”, etc.) to be anything other than something of a disappointment. What’s surprising is just how disappointing it is. As an album, it would make a pretty decent EP.

“Lady Sweet” is the standout cut, a power-pop ballad in the Chris Bell mode sung by Jon Auer. Giving it a run for the money is the Jody Stephens tune “Best Chance”. Both of them hew pretty close to what you might expect from the band, given previous releases. Runners up include Ken Stringfellow’s Beach Boys pastiche “Turn My Back on the Sun”, Stephen’s “September Gurls” update on “February’s Quiet”, and the cover of The Olympics’ “Mine Exclusively”. One could make a case for the inclusion of the relatively homely “Dony”, with its out-of-nowhere sax solo and pedestrian lyric (“yeah, you’re fine girl / where are you from... bright as starshine / and hot as daylight / and as streamlined / as all getout”), but really it’s only skating by on Chilton’s vocal. He’s still got the voice, after all the various forms of abuse he’s thrown its way. That, in and of itself, should count for something.

And then we’re left with the remaining filler tracks. These include the wooden faux- disco/funk blackmail material of “Love Revolution”, the lyric of which consists of Chilton spouting various 70’s clichés. Think I’m making that up? Check it out: “get up and groove, y’all / ooh, shake that funky thing / party down, party down / do it, you’ll like it” / get up and groove, y’all / ooh, shake that funky thing / glitter rock, disco bops / boogie down, boogie down”. I took it as something of a raised middle finger to those of us who obsess over those first couple of albums, and that’s a fair cop, really. Musically speaking, though, this should never have made it past the door of the studio, much less onto the final release. Ditto, in spades, for the instrumental “Aria, Longo”, which sounds like nothing more than the tape your auntie made when your nerdly cousin played his/her bass recital. As a warm-up, it’s probably a good exercise; as a finished track, it something of a slap in the face. And then there’s “Makeover”, the thrown-together jam/mockery of the cult of plastic surgery. No argument with the contempt for the collagen/botox/silicone, but really, couldn’t they have worked on it a bit? I mean, I’d be the last one to try to tell Alex Chilton what a Big Star record should sound like, but putting out what appear to be rehearsal tapes is sorta insulting.

I’m all in favor of spontaneity in the recording process, don’t get me wrong. So much music is recorded with the idea that whatever doesn’t really work right now can be fixed later, which lead to a sort of boring, shiny perfection. Finding the happy accident while putting a song together is a great thing, and can lead to truly intriguing, surprising results. It can also lead to the release of half-formed ideas and tunes chosen simply because they didn’t suck as much as some of the other experiments. I don’t have access to the other music recorded during these sessions, of course – provided there actually are tracks that didn’t make it onto the album – but having given In Space a fair number of spins, I have to wonder why nobody told Chilton how lackluster some of it is. Given a little more time (there were two periods of recording on the album, both lasting a week and a half), there are a couple of tunes (“Dony”, “Hung Up On Summer”) that might have benefited from a little more work.

I dunno. Maybe everybody was just so excited that he’d finally relented and called a Big Star session in the first place. I know I was, until I played the album. After that, it was mostly disappointment at missed opportunities.

(Big Star's In Space is available through Rykodisc.)