By BRIAN GIFFIN
EVER the master storyteller, Alice Cooper turns his spider eyes to the real-life fantasy of rock and roll stardom on his latest album.
Part parody, part cautionary tale, Road is a quasi-biographical story that follows the travelling musician through the creation of his character, misadventures on the road, one-night stands, obsessed fans and a yearning for the journey’s end. Filled with a mixture of Alice’s skewed wisdom, deprecating humour and bawdiness, the concept is given a level of honesty by utilising the Coop’s regular touring band recording live in the studio.
The result is an album with plenty of genuine fun and vitality, the live feel purveyed by a group of musicians feeding off a concert-like energy with the great rock showman as its conductor. The opening brace of songs sound like classic seventies Alice Cooper, “The Big Goodbye” and “Dead Don’t Dance” (featuring Kane Roberts) deal in chuggy eighties metal. “All Over the World” throws a horn section into its campy glam rock schtick and Tom Morello steps in to add some weird guitar shapes to the stomping hard rock of “White Line Frankenstein”. The story winds down with the sinister psychedelic “100 More Miles” where the fate of the protagonist is left to the imagination, and an energetic rave-up through a version of “Magic Bus” (with the lyrics changed to ‘Tour Bus’, natch) rounds it off.
Glen Sobel even gets a drum solo on an album that never really slows down – the surprisingly emotional “Baby Please Don’t Go” excepted – as Alice Cooper and his road-hardened crew power through some inspired rock and roll. He clearly isn’t ready for the Big Goodbye just yet.
Buy Road as a limited edition boxed set encompassing CDs and vinyl
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