Alice Cooper, the now 57-year-old shock rock legend, continues
\nhis blistering output with
\nDirty Diamonds<\/i>, his fourth album of new material in only
\nfive years and 24th studio disc overall. It has received favorable
\nreviews so far, and while I don’t think it’s quite as strong as
\nsome of his recent releases, I do see it as a pretty solid
\ncontinuation of his songwriting abilities.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, however, the bulk of the guitar riffs and chord
\nsequences are far too generic by Alice’s usual standards, even
\nthough some contain great hooks that are very catchy. I’ll admit
\nthat stuff like “Woman Of Mass Distraction” is a run-of-the-mill
\nand a DUMB example of cock rock which he normally doesn’t stoop to
\n— but months before the album came out, Cooper mentioned that he
\nhad written an “AC\/DC-style tribute,” and in that sense I guess he
\nsucceeded, though it’s not a style that suits him. Alice Cooper
\njust doesn’t sound natural when he sings stupid songs like
\nthat.<\/p>\n
On a related note, his lyrics are pretty average throughout the
\nalbum. He recently explained that he’s fond of writing “absurdities
\nbased on strange people and behaviors in society,” and while there
\nare moments here and there that show some of his quirky sense of
\nhumor and keen observations on society, the lyrics just aren’t as
\nclever or witty as normal, a place Cooper rarely falters.<\/p>\n
“Perfect” is intended as a Beatle-esque pop song with Stonesy
\nguitars but is not particularly memorable, while “You Make Me
\nWanna” is also on the uninspired side – it’s an “Under My Wheels”
\nknock-off with boring riffs and annoying verses. The “woo-hoo-hoo”
\nbit in the chorus is pretty dumb too; I understand that he wanted
\nto re-capture his early ’70s sound, but nothing he did back then
\nwas this bland.<\/p>\n
Another one I’m not so crazy about is “Run Down The Devil,”
\nwhich, although certainly catchy in parts, sounds like a
\nDragontown<\/i> leftover with its jarringly downtuned riffs that
\ndon’t appear anywhere else on the disc. “Your Own Worst Enemy” is
\nalso a bit on the blah side of things in terms of riffs and
\narrangements, though like most of the songs, at least the chorus is
\nmemorable.<\/p>\n
But like any Cooper album, there are plenty of gems to be found.
\nDespite the main riff’s striking similarity to “Paranoid” and a
\nmain chorus that sounds kind of sneeringly silly, the title track
\nchugs along nicely, and you gotta love those antiquated ’60s spy
\nmovie muted sax blasts paired with flutes in the middle section! If
\nonly there was more of that sort of stuff going on.<\/p>\n
The highlight of the album, “The Saga Of Jesse Jane,” is
\nfantastic, and is the one song on the album that I can’t stop
\nlistening to over and over. Every Alice album has one or two really
\nbizarre musical novelties, and this is the song this time around.
\nI’d mark it as one of his career highlights. “Steal That Car” is a
\ngreat, energetic ear candy of a rocker, while “Pretty Ballerina” is
\na very apt choice for a cover. It’s a gorgeous song (I had never
\nheard the original by The Left Banke before this), with its
\neccentric psychedelic melody, plinking harpsichord, and flute solo.
\nYet for some reason, most Alice fans have been trashing this song
\nas a terrible addition to
\nDirty Diamonds<\/i>. I just don’t understand that at all — it
\nsounds like a natural companion piece to the Steven suite on
\nWelcome To My Nightmare<\/i>, though hardcore purists of the
\noriginal Alice Cooper band don’t like anything Alice related beyond
\n1973, so their opinions are invalid.<\/p>\n
There’s also the sad blues ballad called “Six Hours,” another
\nmusical surprise. and the first single, “Sunset Babies All Got
\nRabies.” And how about the wonderful “Zombie Dance”? The smoky,
\nsouthern, swampy atmosphere is yet another sound that he’s never
\ntackled before, and I think it turned out great. The album closer,
\n“Stand,” features rap superstar Xzibit. This is another track that
\nhas been consistently derided in reviews as a sad example of Alice
\nCooper desperately stooping to enlisting a popular hip-hop name to
\nappeal to a younger audience, but in reality the producers of the
\nOfficial Soundtrack of the 2004 Summer Olympic Games<\/i> in
\nAthens, Greece simply asked a whole bunch of music stars to
\ncontribute vocals to to the songs they had written for the album,
\nwhose gimmick was that all the songs feature an odd pairing of
\nmusical artists.<\/p>\n
A weaker effort overall than usual, but considering how much
\nwonderful music Cooper’s given us recently, I’m not about to judge
\nhim too harshly for a few missteps here and there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":27166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[5676],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-38512","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-alice-cooper","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38512"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}