Alex Chilton - "Like Flies on Sherbert" CD Album

Alex Chilton – Like Flies on Sherbert

CD Album, Reissue, 1996, France

Last Call Records

Truly one of the great albums in my collection of greats. Alex Chilton's demented, wild, and perhaps insane album Like Flies on Sherbert is a like following a lighted fuse as it approaches the TNT. Instead of cartoon violence, we're getting psyche warfare where one doesn't know how this is going to end up. Half originals, and half covers, this album is a dictionary of ill will but not going silently into the night. If Sgt. Pepper is the grand point of pop, then Like Flies … is the very peak of rockabilly. To me it always represents the end of something, maybe even music?

Without a doubt, Chilton changed gears after this album. But what he left on the operating table is emotion, that I think only an artist like Sam Fuller can appreciate. “Boogie Shoes” is a perfect opening to this chaos. Throw-a-way, loose version of KC and The Sunshine Band's southern soul is the entrance that leads to the deadly “My Rival.” The distorted guitars fighting towards a blissfulness of revenge. “Hey! Little Child” is just brutal, with darkness lurking in its soul, and Alex sometimes sounds like a David Lynch villain. Nevertheless this is the end results of Big Stars' great “Third” album, it goes nowhere, and this is the sound of that state of mind. Masterpiece.