Any rational, working seventy-five-year-old would probably be thinking very seriously about winding down by now. Come on now, old man. That’s enough. It’s time for your pipe and slippers. But as we are all fully aware, Alice Cooper is not your average seventy-five-year-old. In fact, it’s becoming increasingly apparent with each passing year that he is, in all likelihood, an actual vampire. Yes, much like Keith Richards, Alice cannot be killed by conventional weapons.
If not out on tour bringing his bloody theatrics to town, he’s constantly writing new material, and this is where we find ourselves today. On album twenty-nine (including twenty-two solo records) and still cranking out the twisted hits.
No stranger to concept albums, Alice has given us full-length stories about mental asylums, going to Hell, serial killers, nightmares, and more recently, his hometown of Detroit. On Road (earMusic), he stays close to home (in a sense) with a collection of songs about the different aspects of going on tour. Through a series of personal stories and life lessons – sometimes serious, mostly humorous – we are guided into the often surreal world of life on the road.
“For a slice of heaven in this living hell, come and be with the me that you know so well” intones the legendary singer with tongue firmly in cheek on the curtain-raising anthem ‘I’m Alice’ before the fuel-injected thrust of ‘Welcome to the Show’ really sees the record come to life. ‘All Over the World’ possesses a sleazy old school groove and an easygoing chorus that harks back to ‘Eighteen’ with its “like it/love it” refrain while ‘Dead Don’t Dance’ sounds like Pantera covering Black Sabbath‘s ‘Hole in the Sky’ as Alice ponders his existence if he hadn’t found music all those years ago.
‘Go Away’ is about a worryingly persistent female stalker while ‘White Line Frankenstein’ concerns a coked-up truck driver. Boasting not only a big, driving riff but a guest appearance from Rage Against The Machine‘s Tom Morello, it’s also – one for the Fact Fans here – the third song title in Alice’s career to feature the name of that certain famous monster.
Showing that he still possesses a cheeky side, ‘Big Boots’, with its dirty bass line and simple piano accompaniment, is about a sexy truck stop waitress and probably far less about footwear than you might think.
Explaining just what it takes to spend so much time on tour, the excellent ‘Rules of the Road’ is followed by ‘The Big Goodbye’, a pretty heartless but entirely realistic account of trying to get rid of an overly clingy one-night stand. ‘Road Rats Forever’ is, not altogether unsurprisingly, a reworking of ‘Road Rats’ from 1977’s Lace & Whiskey (Warner), the song written from the point of view of the band’s road crew.
It wouldn’t be an Alice Cooper album without a ballad and ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ is one of the best he’s done for years, the lyrics an emotional recounting of having to say goodbye to a loved one at the start of a tour. Before finishing the record with a rousing cover of ‘Magic Bus’ (again, a song not necessarily about what you might think) by The Who, ‘100 More Miles’ is about returning from a long time on the road and the disorientation it causes to suddenly be thrown back into everyday life without a schedule or plan.
Recorded live in the studio with no overdubbing, this is Alice and his band in full flight and with no frills. Guitarists Nita Strauss, Ryan Roxie, and Tommy Henriksen play their fingers off while Chuck Garric produces bass lines that suit each song perfectly and sticksman Glen Sobel‘s drum kit just sounds monstrous. Varied but consistent, retro but modern, Road is yet another top-quality record packed with memorable, instant choruses, killer hooks, and some of Alice’s best lyrics for years.
Buy the album here:
9 / 10
GARY ALCOCK