Cooper gets his motor running
Veteran rocker ditches blood-soaked guillotines and live snakes as he returns to rocking roots
ALICE COOPER: Detroit
Stories (Earmusic)
Verdict: Hometown glory ★★★
WILLIE NELSON:
That’s Life (Legacy)
Verdict: Touching tribute to Ol’ Blue Eyes ★★★★
JULIEN BAKER: Little Oblivions (Matador)
Verdict: Classy confessional pop ★★★★
HE BECAME famous for a stage show that features live snakes and guillotines dripping with fake blood. But underneath the theatrical horror, Alice Cooper has always been an oldfashioned rock and roller.
He cut his musical teeth in his hometown of Detroit — and returns to the Motor City on a new album bristling with purpose.
Detroit Stories is his salute to the place that gave him a break in the 1970s. It was in an old barn on the outskirts of town that Cooper and his original band first teamed up with producer Bob Ezrin. Drilling them for ten hours a day, Ezrin persuaded them to simplify their long, complicated songs and cut to the chase.
Those sessions ultimately led to hits such as School’s Out and Elected, kick-starting a career that’s still going strong, 50 years on.
And Alice, 73, teams up with Ezrin in a Detroit studio again here, cementing his ties to the city by adding a supporting cast of storied Michigan musicians, including veteran MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer and jazz bassist Paul Randolph.
‘Detroit was the birthplace of angry hard rock,’ says Alice of the 1970s, citing local hotspot the Eastown Theatre as the place where a blue-collar crowd could see his group play on the same bill as fellow locals Ted Nugent and Iggy Pop.
Detroit Stories is lively and entertaining. Amid the crunching riffs, there are detours into slinky funk, blues and punk. Producer Ezrin keeps the guitars crisp and clean, making this a pop record as much as a rock one.
Inveterate showman Cooper adds a few hammy touches but, on the whole, doesn’t take himself, or his material, too seriously. It opens with a cover. The Velvet Underground’s Rock And Roll is a song associated with New York, but it was covered by the Detroit Wheels in 1971, and Alice’s strutting, barroom version features a contribution from Wheels drummer Johnny ‘Bee’ Badanjek, backing vocals by the singer’s wife Sheryl and daughter Calico, and honky-tonk cowbell from Ezrin.
THERE are two further covers — Bob Seger’s East Side Story and MC5’s Sister Anne — but most of the songs are new and original. Go Man Go is a turbo-charged account of a hell-for-leather road trip. Our Love Will Change The World is Cooper’s satirical take on today’s cancel culture.
He also reunites with the three surviving members of his original 1970s band on Social Debris and I Hate You. The latter features Alice, guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway and drummer Neal Smith trading playground insults before reflecting on ‘the empty space you left on stage’ — a reference to original lead guitarist Glen Buxton, who died in 1997. Cooper dials down the tempo on $1000 High Heel Shoes — with Sister Sledge and the Motor City Horns adding soulful sway — and even branches into rap on Independence Dave.
Not everything hits the spot: Drunk And In Love is a formulaic blues number, and there’s filler elsewhere in Wonderful World and Shut Up And Rock. But the singer, whose songwriting once drew praise from Bob Dylan, knows the importance of a good tune, and there are enough of them to make this a rewarding return.
Out today on CD (£11), CD/DVD (£15), double vinyl (£28), and as a box set that includes a black face mask (£50), it’s a fitting tribute to the city that inspired him.
WILLIE NELSON says he learned a lot about singing by listening to Frank Sinatra, and those lessons are put to good use on his second album of standards made famous by Ol’ Blue Eyes.
Given his hell-raising past as the godfather of outlaw country, Shotgun Willie might seem an unlikely crooner. But he and Sinatra were friends, and Nelson brings a gentle, twinkling spirit to the table.
The cover painting shows Willie, 87, and his guitar, Trigger, in the glow of a streetlamp. The image evokes the sleeve of Sinatra’s In The Wee Small Hours, and he sings that album’s lovesick title track with smooth charm. On his previous Sinatra album, My Way, he sang with Norah Jones. Here, he duets with Diana Krall on the bright and breezy I Won’t Dance.
With lush strings and horns providing an elegant backdrop, he tackles some big songs with aplomb. I’ve Got You Under My Skin is relaxed rather than punchy. You Make Me Feel So Young is sung without irony by the octogenarian. The mood is generally jazzy, although a Stetson is doffed to Willie’s country roots in the pedal steel guitar that adorns the title track. Having written Crazy and Funny How Time Slips Away, Nelson is no stranger to standards. He puts his own distinctive spin on a few here.
JULIEN BAKER’S third album is another of those introspective records that chimes well with the sedate pace of lockdown life.
The Memphis singer-songwriter, 25, is essentially a one-woman indie-rock band, and Little Oblivion sees her add richness and variety to her soul-baring songs by playing almost every instrument herself.
She addresses her demons and depression unflinchingly. ‘What if it’s all black, baby,’ she sings, over hazy guitars and keyboards, on Hardline.
Raised in a religious family, she asks for God’s help on Ringside, and is joined by Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus (her bandmates in the female trio Boygenius) on Favor.
With her country-ish voice a perfect foil to her ghostly guitar, there are tracks that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Taylor Swift’s recent folk-pop albums.