Some of us will never forgive Alice Cooper for disbanding the Alice Cooper Band after releasing an impressive catalog of material that required no revamping whatsoever.Once departed/terminated, Alice promptly released one embarrassment after another, all of which followed similar formulas that usually featured one ballad that snuck Alice’s name in the top 40, a weird blend of schmaltz and desperation. In short order, Vincent Furnier dismantled the good name of a great band while caring more for his notoriety instead of quality music.
Strangely, Cooper opted for another image transfusion when a new decade arrived-a new wave freak that began looking more like a retirement-age Betty Davis undergoing cancer treatments-and with it came a new direction in sound.
The sound, in case you’re wondering, was a blatant attempt at sounding modern. To help, Alice enlisted the help of Roy Thomas Baker-the “in” producer for late 70’s new wave garb and the dude responsible for splicing all of that tape for Queen’s over-the-top vocal treatments.
There’s none of those treatments on Flush The Fashion, but you can hear a bunch of the same synth tones found on The Cars’ Panorama and a weird similarity to Iggy Pop’s output around this same period.
Alice hails from the same town as Ig, so maybe the sound is intentional. Regardless of the source or inspiration, Cooper delivers an oddly compelling record that seems to suggest that his heart was actually in it for a moment.
That’s more than you can say for the follow up releases to Flush The Fashion where Alice admits that he doesn’t even remember recording.
I’m willing to bet that he remembers these R.T.B. sessions, and I’m also willing to bet that he tried hard at this career re-invention at both the creative and image level.
The first single “Clones (We’re All)” is a fine example of this. Cooper recites some Orwellian imagery and phonetically places like a robot over some Greg Hawkes keystrokes. It works and it sounds like a lost new wave classic today.
The same is true for “Pain,” where Alice goes into a tried-and-true definition lyric formula (“I’m the holes in your arms when you’re feeling the shakes/And I’m the lump on your head when you step on the rake”) and comes out somewhat victorious.
Most of the rest album, unfortunately, doesn’t. Those instances of real inspiration are sagged by a plethora of other songs that sound like they’ve stopped at the arrangement portion of the creative process. Too often, Alice uses a singsong technique and just rattles off words that he thinks sounds menacing.
That means you get songs about “Aspirin Damage” and nuclear meltdowns (complete with The China Syndrome nods!), all delivered in a range-less tone because Alice can’t seem to find the same kind of inspiration as he did on the more realized material.
Add it up and Flush The Fashion might indeed be the best album since his days as the frontman for the Alice Cooper Band. Unfortunately, it’s almost as lazy as some of those same offerings, proving that maybe he should have focused more on reinventing his deteriorating lifestyle than his overhauling his image.
Because a sober ear could have easily heard that Alice was pointed in the right direction during some moments of Flush The Fashion, but for the rest of the record, he clearly was too inebriated to steer.
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