Chris Bell - I Am The Cosmos (Expanded Edition) (2017)

I Am The Cosmos: a perfect testimony of Chris Bell's brilliance in his mastery of an underestimated and poignant pop. The guitarist from Big Star was already stunning the crowds with this power pop group, but this solo album (recorded between 1972 and 1974) brought out an even brighter light. Most of the tracks are delightfully romantic, though he sometimes ventures into more lyrical and schizophrenic territory, like on I Am the Cosmos or Speed Of Sound. The centerpiece, You and Your Sister, is a beautiful pop love song. It’s an intense and luminous ballad in which Alex Chilton, his accomplice from Big Star, lends his voice to the choirs. Bell was more than just a young man of 27 at the time. He was a true creator of beauty. A diffuser of tenderness. An offbeat being who tried to express his "psychic" vision through this very Big Star sound but very Bell above all. The edition that Omnivore Recordings proposes here includes 35 tracks, many of which have never been released... I Am The Cosmos is a dark record and while Chris Bell's career had not yet taken off, it was because the singers life was taken first when he lost control of his Triumph TR-6... A tormented character, he entered a great depression after leaving Big Star in 1972. Alcohol and drugs accompanied him throughout his career, at the Château d'Hérouville in France, where he recorded extensively, and in Memphis, his hometown. This too short a life that ended in 1978 was reborn in a way in 1992, when David Bell, his brother, decided to publish his models which would become this essential I Am The Cosmos. © Clara Bismuth