In Space | |
Type: | Album |
Artist: | Big Star |
Cover: | Inspace.jpg |
Recorded: | 2004 |
Studio: | Ardent Studios, Memphis, Tennessee |
Genre: | Power pop |
Length: | 39:04 |
Label: | Rykodisc |
Producer: | Big Star, Jeff Powell |
Prev Title: | Columbia: Live at Missouri University 4/25/93 |
Prev Year: | 1993 |
Next Title: | Keep an Eye on the Sky |
Next Year: | 2009 |
In Space is the fourth and final studio album by American rock group Big Star, released in 2005. It was the first new Big Star studio album since Third/Sister Lovers, recorded in 1974 and released in 1978.
The album features original Big Star members Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens on guitar and drums respectively, with two more recent recruits, Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow who play second guitar and bass. Auer and Stringfellow had been members of The Posies before joining Big Star in 1993 for sporadic live performances and tours.[1] The four band members share lead vocal duty across the album's twelve tracks, with Chilton singing the majority.
In Space features new original material credited to all four members, alongside the occasional cowriter, along with two covers. According to Ken Stringfellow's recollections in the liner notes of the album's 2019 reissue, the album came about due to Chilton's reluctance to play much of Big Star's pre-existing back catalogue, preferring to record new material. The songs on the album are largely power-pop, along with the blues typical of Chilton's latter-day musical career, also incorporating influences from disco on "Love Revolution", and baroque on "Aria, Largo". The album, similarly to the band's prior three records, was recorded in Ardent Studios, being written in studio over a period of two weeks.
Opening track "Dony" is a power-pop song typical of the band's prior material, written in collaboration between Alex Chilton and Jon Auer, sung by Chilton, and incorporating a prominent saxophone solo. "Lady Sweet", the album's second track, was written and sung by Auer, and bears resemblance to the Chris Bell led songs of
Bonus tracks on the 2019 reissue include "Hot Thing," a Chilton led song which was originally recorded by the band in 1997 as its contribution to the tribute album Big Star, Small World, a project delayed by a succession of record label failures before its eventual release in 2006. Also included are sketches for two songs Jon Auer cowrote for the album, an acapella track of Stringfellow's "Turn My Back on the Sun", and a rough mix of Chilton and Auer's "Dony" featuring additional lyrics in place of the saxophone line.
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