Alice Cooper

Dirty Diamonds – (New West)

After wandering in the wilderness for a while, enveloped in the heavy metal clichés of the last 15 years or so, Alice returned to a brand of dirty and nasty rock and roll on par with the billion dollar baby days with 2003's Eyes Of Alice Cooper. Happily, with Dirty Diamonds, this appears to be a trend.

While Dirty Diamonds lacks Eyes… song-by-song batting average, it nevertheless has plenty of those things we love about the shock-rock pioneer.  Alice’s snarly vocals are as, uh, snarly as ever, his sense of humour and satire are intact, and he’s clearly having a good time with a band that appreciates Alice needing no “updating” (as opposed to “Feed My Frankenstein” and other atrocities).

Dirty Diamonds is at its best when delivering the three-minute pop-rock jolt.  Songs like “Sunset Babies” and “Your Own Worst Enemy” wrap up both his outrageous and pop-lovin’ side in nice little bundles – mini-anthems requiring that your car windows be rolled down.  Further evidence of Alice’s weakness for this is the terrific cover of The Left Banke’s “Pretty Ballerina”, done with reverence rather than irony.  Hey, man, there’s a flute in there.

Where Dirty Diamonds falters a little is on the slower rock of “Six Hours” and “Zombie Dance”, which are simply not interesting enough musically to keep your attention.  Still, neither of those is as ill-advised as the “duet” with rapper Xzibit “Stand”, which is nowhere near as fun as the dusty road tune “The Saga Of Jesse Jane”. Otherwise, there’s a solid continuing return to form here – there’s no one like Alice, bub.

7.2