I Am the Cosmos by Chris Bell

I Am the Cosmos is the only solo album Chris Bell ever made, and he never lived to see it released: Rykodisc finally put it out in 1992, well over a decade after his death in December 1978. Bell had led Big Star alongside Alex Chilton through their first album, #1 Record, in 1972, then spent the middle of the decade chasing his own songs, producing these sessions himself.

What he left behind is power pop with the lights turned low, bruised and yearning, chiming guitars carrying a man looking for something to hold on to. A lot of what he found was faith: many of these songs reflect his turn toward Christianity. His brother David wrote the booklet notes and took the photographs, including the cover shot of a Swiss valley near Nendaz with the snowy Les Diablerets massif behind it. Rhino Handmade later expanded it into a deluxe two-CD set in 2009.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.