Album: Alice Cooper - Detroit Stories | reviews, news & interviews
Album: Alice Cooper - Detroit Stories
Album: Alice Cooper - Detroit Stories
50+ years into his career the veteran shock rocker's latest is contagiously entertaining
A decade ago, Alice Cooper reconnected with his roots. He created a sequel to his 1975 album Welcome to my Nightmare with Bob Ezrin, the producer whose vision crystallized Alice Cooper, the band, and shot them to stardom in the early-Seventies. The survivors of that original outfit also played on the album, their first recordings with the singer in 38 years.
Detroit Stories is an unashamed retro-rockin’ good time, nostalgically paying tribute to the city that gave the group their platform. It includes Wayne Kramer of MC5 on guitar and revels in sheer goofy trash-riffin’, opening with an unrecognizable take on The Velvet Underground’s “Rock’n’Roll”, part arch showbiz and part biker bar.
US proto-punk rears its head throughout, notably on the Dictators-like stomper “Go Man Go”, and “I Hate You”, the latter purposefully sung-shouted badly by each band member in turn. Elsewhere the music ranges from the cheery, catchy Vaudeville-rock schtick of “Our Love Will Change the World” and the funkin’ “$1000 High Heels” (featuring Sister Sledge and the Motor City Horns), to a bunch of songs that come on like early ZZ Top on a kitsch garage trip. The lyrics throughout are enjoyably ludicrous, garish and hammy (“Drunk and in Love: “I saw you, baby, and I pissed my pants/Now I’m shaking while I’m trying to stand/Come into my cardboard box and out of the storm/You can mend my socks while I keep you warm.”)
Aside from a closing garagey assault on an early Bob Seger cut, “East Side Story”, things tail off after catchy power-pop slowie “Wonderful World”. The album would be tighter without a trio of lesser tunes at its end, including a Quo-ish take on MC5’s “Sister Anne” and the heartfelt but tacky state-of-the-COVID-nation morale-booster “Don’t Give Up”. These are "bonus tracks" and, in any case, who cares! Only the supremely deluded would expect non-stop sonic originality on a new album from Alice Cooper, but for sheer spirit-raising rock’n’roll kicks’n’giggles, Detroit Stories is a blast.
Below: Watch the video for "Social Debris" by Alice Cooper
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