Alice Cooper - Dirty Diamonds
Spitfire Records - SPITCD257 - 2005
By Philip Whitehouse
Back-to-our-roots albums are usually dictated by a critical and commercial backlash against an established artist's change of direction, usually centred around the last release that artist put out. However, everyone's favourite golfing, Christian, Vaudeville shock rock loon has been down this path once before, with 2003's
Eyes Of Alice Cooper. Whereas that album was stripped-down, overdub-free garage rock, however,
Dirty Diamonds melds that sensibility to slightly more modern,
Jet/
White Stripes atmospheres to pleasing effect.
Opening cut 'Woman Of Mass Distraction' is a ballsy rock-out number with twangy, string-bend happy guitars, whilst next track 'You Make Me Wanna' features twelve-string acoustics and a 'whoo-hoo-hoo' chorus. Title track 'Dirty Diamonds' contains a
Welcome To My Nightmare-revisited feel, bolted onto a riff that could have come from a
Queens Of The Stone Age record. Generally, the whole record is a classic, old-school hard rocking extravaganza. Except for the more 'experimental' tracks.
There's country-and-western ballad 'The Saga Of Jesse Jane', showing Alice to be quite adept at performing a gravelly Southern drawl whilst singing about a murderous transvestite truck driver and keeping a straight face. There's 'Pretty Ballerina', a cover of a band called
The Left Banke that sounds somewhat like
Spinal Tap's '(Listen To) The Flower People'. There's even a rap/rock collaboration with Pimp My Ride host
Xzibit that proves to be a lot more tolerable than you'd expect. These oddities add to the character of a confident, enjoyable and surprisingly coherent body of work that stands among some of Alice's best.
8.5/10
Official Alice Cooper Website
Official Spitfire Records Website
