The Revenge of Alice Cooper - Alice Cooper (earMUSIC)
Goddamn. It's been over 50 years. I loved the original Alice Cooper Band. That live album they recently did of old songs was fucking cool. Surely this will be great. My anticipation, like pride, comes before a fall.
The Revenge of Alice Cooper? That might be too strongly stated. It's not even really the return of Alice Cooper. Maybe it's the retirement plan of Alice Cooper. Christ. The boys in the original band definitely deserve something. They were royally shafted.
We've had a few of these reunion albums over recent years. The Stooges did "The Weirdness" which was pretty much loathed but I rather liked. "Ready to Die" followed to a better reaction. I loved it but others weren't so keen.
The New York Dolls did three. I love the first and the third. The second kind of failed miserably by attempting to suck up to modern expectations.
The MC5 album wasn't even a decent Wayne Kramer LP. It's dangerous pushing legacy without killing goodwill.
So here we have the return of the original Alice Cooper Band. The good news is it basically isn't that much worse than "Muscle of Love" (an album that was desperate for a single). The band pretty much cooks and retains quirkiness. Cooper can still carry a song. As a functioning band, this sounds pretty fucking great. There are various echoes of times of yore. A bit of "Under My wheels" here. A little "Desperado" there. It all has a whole lot of familiarity going for it. Except...
Well, firstly, no decent single.
But the main problem is fairly Godawful lyrics. Like, seventy plus year old men singing songs about keeping it up all night is cringe. Black Mambas slipping into your bed sheets are not all that much fun if they are shrivelled and misshapen. Alice Cooper used to have wit and this is not even half way there. There is a time and a place when one needs to keep it in one's pants.
"Wild Ones" might power away musically but lyrically it's similarly pretty delusional. Personally, I don't deny I am now a ridiculous old fuck but these words sound like my Dad and his mates discussing hanging around a pond feeding beer soaked bread to the ducks. We are still bad boys. No you are not.
Cooper used to sing "Dead Babies" like it was a Beatles song. It was funny. He threw dollar bills at the audience with his face printed on them. Nothing here has any of that tongue in its collective cheek. And, whilst "Kill the Flies" plays with familiar Cooper themes, is no "Ballad of Dwight Frye".
"Crap That Gets In The Way Of Your Dreams" seems far too mean spirited to be part of the Cooper oeuvre. Cooper used to mock the spectacle, not its losers.
Also Alice Cooper albums used to be a tight 40 minutes. This has way too much fat.
All that said, this is probably better than any Cooper solo album (with the possible exception of"Welcome to my Nightmare" but I never forgave him for that.)
Just try to ignore the lyrics.
