Albums that sound similar to Big Star's 3rd?

Having trouble finding other albums with this kind of "style".

 

Velvet Umderground.

 

Maybe The Velvet Underground's self-titled third album? Or perhaps Portishead's third album 3. If nothing else they're both downbeat third albums from cult bands.

 

Try Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

 

yea good call, i remember somewhere saying Reservations kind of had a Kangaroo thing going on

 

or Lou Reed's Berlin

 

I don't think there is anything else that sounds like it, or that the album really even has a style. Songs like "Jesus Christ", "Stroke it Noel" , "Holocaust" and "Blue Moon" don't even sound like they would be on the same album. But it works and it's beautifully unique.

 

Some good suggestions, really like that record, truth be told probably more than the other Big Star records, though maybe not a fair comparison since it is so different from what came before. I'd put the amazing Cardinal record from around 1994 in that same place, at least for me. Some of the same atmosphere, chamber pop with eclectic lyrics and clever arrangements, kind of dark and depressing. Cult following with a lot of critical acclaim. Magic that was never fully duplicated before or after. Great record. If so inclined, the original is far better than the later remaster for all the usual reasons. Bonus tracks aplenty, mostly you can live without, but goosed sound. The original is a beautiful job.

 

to me, the Chris Bell I Am The Cosmos stuff is the flipside of Third. the subject matter/overall depressive vibe is similar between the two. except Bell was still working within a crunchy pop-rock framework, while Chilton really went all over the map.

 

This Mortal Coil on 4AD.

 

Third is a very unique record... the arrangements are varied and unorthodox at the same time...

I'd say that I hear something from Third in Elliott Smith's music. Although Smith's compositions are maybe more guitar-oriented than the songs on third, I think they share a similar geist (Smith covered a few Big Star songs in his carreer, including Stroke it Noel).

Maybe From a Basement on a Hill is the album I'd suggest. It experiments with noise and instrumentation, it's somewhat incohesive and demo-like (it's posthumous: those are songs he was recording for a double-album when he died).

 

"Down Colorful Hill" (Red House Painters)

 

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