Yahoo! Music Review

Gig played on 29/08/08

It's a random world. So it's statistically possible that the audience for tonight's concert by Big Star, the '70s power-pop cult icons whose name is tattooed onto the very heart of alt.rock, includes some casual observers. But in fact - and here's the thing that makes Big Star gigs as unmissable for their psychological strangeness as for those peerlessly pealing guitars - the only casual observer you ever see, in a room packed with musicians and civilians hungrily staring centre stage, is Alex Chilton himself.

Alex, the man whose glorious guitar and stainlessly perfect pop brings us here. Alex, suave and sweatless in summer slacks, looking like a boy fast-forwarded to his 50s. Alex, in a rare visit to a city he loathes, grinning at in-jokes. Alex, who's dismissed some of his most-loved songs as the work of a "deeply maudlin young man". Alex, who before the gig's half done is checking his watch. But even semi-detached, he makes hearts beat harder, from the abrupt, loose-chorded slang of "In The Street" to the gospel-chorusing "Thank You Friends", his biting delivery still never revealing whether it's heartfelt or sarcastic. Possibly, coming from a dialectical materialist, it's both.

It's odd, admittedly, that 15 years after a re-formed Big Star debuted onstage in Columbia, Missouri, they're playing the same pre-encore set - including the defiantly chiming "Ballad Of El Goodo", the magical "Thirteen", the wrenching "I loved you / Well, nevermind" of "September Gurls" - in exactly the same order. Not much else has changed, either, bar a 2005 album that, says Alex pointedly, "I don't think anybody much noticed - sort of like our first one." The two Posies recruited in '93 have lost their Columbia air of panic, but Jon is still Alex's perfect vocal double and Ken's still throwing frowning bass shapes. And impossibly buff, teen idol-haired 56-year-old drummer Jody is still taking the mic on "Way Out West" and "For You".

It may be nothing new, but to (almost) everyone here, it's a beautiful thing. As Jon tears passionately into "I Am The Cosmos" by Big Star co-founder Chris Bell, dead at 27, Alex smiles pleasantly, flicking through a jaunty guitar line. As Ken nails the lead vocals in "Daisy Glaze", Alex adopts a look of mild interest. And then, after a Kinks cover, he lauds British music of the mid-'70s…only to add he means proper-music types Gerald Finley and Frank Bridge, announcing with real enthusiasm: "We've worked up this tribute to Sir Edward Elgar…" Ken and Jon, gamely, dig in.

He departs following a glorious "Wouldn't It Be Nice", a wave and a smile - for Brian Wilson, or Elgar, or the prospect of a cigarette. Or maybe, after 20-odd years of alt.rock devotion, Alex Chilton's become just a tiny bit fond of us. But it's probably the fag.

by Jennifer Nine