Alice Cooper - Trash review
| Band: | Alice Cooper |
| Album: | Trash |
| Style: | Hard rock, Heavy metal, Glam rock |
| Release date: | 1989 |
| A review by: | ScreamingSteelUS |
01. Poison
02. Spark In The Dark
03. House Of Fire
04. Why Trust You
05. Only My Heart Talkin'
06. Bed Of Nails
07. This Maniac's In Love With You
08. Trash
09. Hell Is Living Without You
10. I'm Your Gun
By the time 1989 rolled around, Alice Cooper's last noteworthy album was older than the careers of most of his competition. After a few years of sobriety and a few forays into this glam rock business that was lighting up the charts, Alice finally returned to mainstream success with Trash, a hook-and-synth-heavy concession to the MTV scene that emulated the ritzy, glitzy edge of bands like Mötley Crüe.
Though it leads off quite propitiously with the rich, dark glamour of "Poison," Trash quickly dives into the seedy underbelly of the L.A. scene, tossing out crusty sing-alongs like "House Of Fire" and "Bed Of Nails." This might not be Alice's finest hour or defining incarnation, but at least this album has a lot more going for it than its predecessors. The songwriting is stronger and more consistent, and Alice himself sounds a lot more interested in his work. The centerpiece and apex of his five-album affair with glam rock, Trash makes sense for Alice Cooper, in a way; he was always kind of an alley cat, and he habitually explores what this "young rapscallion" persona means for new generations. Trash fits right in next to its compatriots Skid Row, Twisted Sister, and the like.
That doesn't save songs like "Only My Heart Talkin'" and "I'm Your Gun" from being downright goofy. With those John-Hughes-movie-synths, that theme-song-to-a-Friday-the-13th-sequel-chorus, and its ludicrously jaunty swagger, "This Maniac's In Love With You" captures perfectly the spirit of the album, as well as a decade's worth of teen-movie-house-party-oriented radio hits. I'm envisioning a live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film as I write this. Maybe it has nothing concrete to do with this album, but it does in spirit. It may come as no surprise that prolific hitmaker extraordinaire Desmond Child, whose then-recent projects included KISS, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, and Cher, shares songwriting credit on this entire album.
It feels rather surreal to sing the praises of an album that tends to represent an unfavorable reappropriation of Alice Cooper's image, and one that, coming from most other artists, would not have a leg to stand on. Even Alice Cooper can only get so much mileage out of the silly contrivations of the hair metal sound, which is what about half of this album truly amounts to. Yet Trash benefits from standing head-and-shoulders above its contemporaries.
Trash is at the end of the day an album with multiple personalities. The innate humor makes it sound more genuine and "classic Alice" than his other, blander albums from this period, but also likely stems from aging poorly, and means that some of these songs simply sound silly; meanwhile, much of the album is unusually well-written for non-peak Alice Cooper, and "Poison" still carries magic, but nothing holds a candle to the periods of artistic brilliance bookending this particular foray.
Rating breakdown
| Performance: | 8 |
| Songwriting: | 7 |
| Originality: | 5 |
| Production: | 7 |
 | Written on 27.01.2015 by I'm the reviewer, and that means my opinion is correct. |
Comments
Comments: 1
Visited by: 8 users
| ScreamingSteelUS Editor-in-Chief Admin Posts: 5923  |
Having revisited Trash many times over the years, I think that my assessment of its longevity was harsh; it always was silly, I'm sure, and after several rounds with Beast In Black I can no longer say that I don't actually love those goofy synths. While it may belong to a specific point in time, that's part of the appeal in retrospect, and I become more enamored of the songwriting with each listen (though "I'm Your Gun" and "Trash" are still kind of skippable, and I have to be in the mood for "Only My Heart Talkin'"). If it's still fun, then it holds up; plus there are some career highlights here. My choice of glam rock/metal name-drops was somewhat off the mark; the strokes were too broad until I got to the bit about Desmond Child, because the alumni of his production do seem like close points of comparison. And you can tell that I was biased against this era of Alice's career; I still fully maintain that nothing from his glam days holds a candle to the early or later classics and I'd prefer that Alice be remembered for "Dead Babies" over "Poison", but over the years I've come to respect and enjoy this series of albums more, so I don't feel the need to be quite so critical of this stylistic shift.
---- "Earth is small and I hate it" - Lum Invader I'm the Agent of Steel.
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