Big Star - Nothing Can Hurt Me (Omnivore)

To tie in with the imminent release of Nothing Can Hurt Me, the long-awaited documentary about seminal American rock & roll band Big Star, Ardent Studios engineers John Fry (a Big Star associate from the beginning) and Adam Hill have assembled a soundtrack from the band’s catalog. Everything has been either remixed (the “movie mix”) or taken from alternate mixes, with a demo of “O My Soul” to kick things off. Nearly all of the band’s staples are here: “In the Street,” “Kanga Roo,” “When My Baby’s Beside Me,” “Don’t Lie to Me,” “Holocaust,” “The Ballad of El Goodo” and, of course, “September Gurls,” which comes in at the end. Fry and Hill include plenty of less heralded gems as well, including “You Get What You Deserve,” “Stroke It Noel,” “Way Out West,” “Thirteen” and more, plus Chris Bell solo tunes “I Am the Cosmos” and “Better Save Yourself,” the lovely (if melancholy) solo Alex Chilton song “All We Ever Got From Them Was Pain,” and “Try Again,” from BS predecessor Rock City. The only essential missing is, mysteriously, “Nighttime.” The differences in these mixes from the originals will likely be noticeable only to serious Big Star trainspotters; for the rest of us, Nothing Can Hurt Me serves as a best-of or, better yet, a great introduction for the Big Star newcomer. After all, these are songs that hold up over thousands of listens, and spinning them once again is nothing but a pure pleasure.

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