Third was the first Big Star album I heard. I used to listen to it in Muncie while in college, especially when I was feeling a little down or high. It's got great melodies like every Big Star album, but it's also filled with sardonic wit and a palpable fuck-off vibe. Only lead songwriter Alex Chilton and drummer Joey Stevens were left by this point, and the power pop sound of #1 Record and Radio City is mostly gone, replaced by an expansive production, full of instruments that ebb in and out. Chilton claims that Third isn't even a Big Star album, and that the release of the record was completely out of his hands. Regardless, it's a great mood piece, a melancholy dream to play when you just want to sit on the couch with a joint/six pack and wallow in your own strangeness. Jesus Christ is one of my favorites, a half-assed retelling of the Christmas story. Chilton's fragile voice fits the Velvet Underground's Femme Fatale better than Nico's monotone. "I'd rather shoot a woman than a man/I wonder if this is my last life," he croons on Oh Dana, a rambling rock song that doesn't quite rock as much as it fades in and out of existence. Holocaust is my pick for the saddest song ever written. "Your eyes are almost dead, can't get out of bed, and you can't sleep," with every line getting worse. "You're mother's dead, you're on your own, she's in her bed." Add in the brilliance of the backing instrumentation--detuned strings, a lamenting slide guitar, and a minor piano--and you have a song that you can't forget. It's not all dread, however. Kanga Roo sounds like old Big Star mostly, although it's as if Brian Eno tampered with the track after recording. Stroke It Noel has the half-hearted refrain "Do you wanna dance?" uttered against a chamber pop background, while For You embraces that genre a little more honestly. A truly great record, no matter the circumstances of its creation.
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