Another late night, but the
Odyssey rolls on, with a return to an oft-visited favourite.
Disc 950 is….Dragontown
Artist: Alice
Cooper
Year of Release: 2001
What’s up with the Cover? Alice looks tense, like he’s
about to…sai. Get it? Get it?
Man I
crack myself up.
How I Came To Know It: I stopped buying Alice Cooper albums
for a few years and it took me a while before I got into his later catalogue. I
believe someone bought me this album as a gift, but I’m embarrassed to say I
can’t remember who. Whoever it was it helped kick start my interest in his more
recent catalogue, so thank you!
How It Stacks Up: I have 26 Alice Cooper albums. “Dragontown”
isn’t top tier, but it holds its own. I’ll rank it 12th.
Ratings: 3 stars but almost 4
“Dragontown”
is the final entry in Alice Cooper’s terrifying vision of the future, with the
titular location a town on a brutal planet of sin and terror.
The
album is Alice at his heaviest phase, embracing the loudness of the early
oughts, sometimes to good effect, and sometimes overdoing it a bit (as a lot of
metal artists did at the same time). The songs crunch along and tend toward
aggressive guitar riffs and rough subjects. Cooper’s voice has even more snarl
to it than usual, and sometimes suffers from being given too many treatments in
production. He doesn’t need these, as he can still belt out a tune, but on “Dragontown”
he is more interested in his trademark rasp than showing off his vocal range.
The
title track and “I Just Wanna Be God”
are particularly heavy and delivered with both majesty and crunch in equal
measure. These are songs about the power brokers of Alice Cooper’s new world
order, each of them doomed but unrepentant.
The
album is an exploration of bad people and the evil places they congregate
(Dragontown being the most obvious). Alice flows freely from the excesses of
the present into the decay of a near-future dystopia drawing connections on how
we get there.
The
record doesn’t just talk about those in charge of the world’s collapse, but
also those who empower them. The best of these is “Sex, Death and Money” which despite straying dangerously close to
Nu-Metal shows Cooper’s talent for showing hypocrisy even as he plays the
villain for our general amusement. Cooper’s character feigns disgusted as he
sings:
“When I go to the show
All I see on the screen
Is a stream of pure vulgarity
I wrote down a note
Complained for a day
To the House of Representatives”
And
proves his outrage later with:
“I was so offended
As I sat for three hours
It was mental cruelty
I was so shocked”
So
terrible, but it took three hours just to be sure. We get the entertainment we
secretly desire, and Cooper is happy to be the deranged cheerleader pointing it
out. He’s been making songs like this for years, and it continues to amaze me
that people are outraged by him, even as they prove his point.
“Fantasy Man” explores the same character
from the other side; someone who is perfectly comfortable acknowledging their
lack of standards and morals. Both songs are fun and walk a fine line between
anthem and hard rock protest. In Cooper’s world, they are fundamentally the
same thing.
On “Disgraceland” Cooper even takes a shot
at the King, summing up Elvis’ last moments as:
“He ate his weight in country
ham,
Killed on pills and woke in
disgraceland”
Half the
song is sung in a hilarious Elvis impersonator voice, presumably because just
singing it straight wouldn’t offend enough people.
The
songs don’t show a lot of range in terms of their structure, but they are
played with energy and power and there aren’t any true stinkers. “Every Woman Has a Name” comes closest,
being a pale imitation of “Only Women
Bleed.” Think what you will of “Only
Women Bleed” it is a rock classic. Even though “Every Woman Has a Name” is an alright tune, it feels unnecessary
and derivative.
While
the album is mostly metal in flavour, there are some pure rock crooners as
well, and one of my favourite tracks, “It’s
Much Too Late” is one of these. Telling the story of the same type of
character we meet earlier on “Sex, Death
and Money” we hear him now surprised to find himself in hell, still unclear
what he’s done wrong. The song has an effortless and memorable melody and could
be a pop ballad with a different treatment. The chorus is so infectious I found
myself singing along like an idiot on my walk home. Thankfully it was nice and
dark, and traffic was light.
My
version of “Dragontown” is the “bonus CD” version which contains an extra song
(the remarkably good “Clowns Will Eat Me”
and live versions and remixes of earlier Cooper tracks “Go To Hell”, “Ballad of
Dwight Fry” and “Brutal Planet”
all of which are OK, but none of which are indispensable.
“Dragontown”
beats you over the head a bit with its message, but the music is solid and it’s
funny and troubling in the right proportions. It could use a bit of restraint
in the production room, but it’s a good record from rock’s greatest jester; scolding
us and thrilling us in equal measure.
Best
tracks: Dragontown,
Sex Death and Money, Fantasy Man, Disgraceland, I Just Wanna Be God, Much Too
Late
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