Bach's Bottom

by Stewart MasonRecorded in 1975 and 1976, shortly after Big Star broke up during the fractious, drug-addled sessions for their final album, the songs on Bach's Bottom were similarly left stranded at the time, although four of them did eventually show up on the 1977 Ork Records EP Singer Not the Song. Released well after the sessions, Bach's Bottom (a punning title on Chilton's first band) is a mess. As a mess, it's a less-glorious mess than Sister Lovers, which manages to sound spooky and haunted and decadent and rocking as often as not; these 15 songs mostly just sound like drunken, sneering rambles. (All three versions of the lumbering jam "Take Me Home and Make Me Like It" sound like they're on the verge of total collapse, and not in a good way.) On the other hand, that actually fits songs like "Free Again," the most obviously Big Star-like tune here, and the storming cover of the Seeds' "Can't Seem to Make You Mine," so parts of the album actually work. And of course, it has "Bangkok," possibly Chilton's finest post-Big Star single, so it's close to necessary just for that. But Bach's Bottom is strictly for the hardcore Chilton fan, as it's one of his most willfully difficult and impenetrable records.