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Dada Album Review
Alice Cooper
'Da Da'
(Warner Bros)
"Come now, lay down on the couch and watch the swinging locket. You're eyes are getting heavy. You are sleeping deeply. Now, what's the trouble?"
"I've got this daughter, I mean son, sorry, called Alice Cooper, doc..."
"Oh dear, now I begin to understand the problem."
Imagine it - being 'Da Da' (or 'Ma Ma') to this guy. Alice's parents must spend a fortune on analysts bills - almost as much as him!
This record, his umpteenth at last count, has Alice continuing through his third vinyl decade as gracefully, yet tastelessly, as his terminally twisted mind will allow. He may have long since lost the ability (or probably the desire) to write punchy rock anthems but he can still come up with mature and quirky AOR (never bland like it's sickly FM relative).
His tongue-in-cheek sick sense of humour is brilliantly to the fore in the lyrics here, whether he's moaning at his dad (in 'Enough's Enough') or wondering about his deceased brother locked upstairs (in 'Former Lee Warmer').
Melodies and hooks take their time (and repeated listens) to grab you by the throat, but the words should leave you in strangled fits of laughter immediately. Picture the scene they paint as our hero is dragged out of a Santa Claus outfit by some 23 year old nymphomaniac ahead of a queue of kids ('No Man's Land'). Then cringe at the chorus of side one's closer 'Dyslexia' - 'Is dis love, or is dyslexia?' (And, whilst we're on the subject, am I reading too much into it when I note that 'dis love' is a dyslexic anagram of 'evil sod'?!)
Side two dabbles in sexual perversion (via 'Scarlet And Sheba' with its Spector-ish chorus of 'I just want your body, Sheba, I don't want your mind. Scarlet gets what's left of my remains')... Over-the-top patriotism (with Alice's superbly corny delivery of 'I Love America')... and vampirism ('Fresh Blood')... before coming to an end with a good ole cocktail of vodka and Russian roulette ('Pass The Gun Around').
With further spinning, this could well become a latter day A.C. classic because 'Da Da' already sounds better than anything he's done in yonks. Thank goodness for Alice!!!