Published on Oct 15, 2001
Before I get down to the nitty gritty on this album, let me
first share with you a theory that I have, a theory that quite a
few people seem to agree on. Now that we are at the beginning of
the 21st century, we can look back and it seems that despite the
1980’s yielding a lot of great music, it also seems to be a decade
in which more total crap was created than at any other point,
disturbingly enough by most veteran bands and artists.
It seems that just about every great rock band that rose to
prominence in the 70’s started to change their sound and image to
stay up to date with the times, but for some reason, in 99% of the
cases, the music didn’t just suffer, but it became downright awful,
which is very bizarre considering these bands put out great quality
music year after year, album after album, throughout the 70’s, and
unfortunately, Alice Cooper was no exception… I guess at some
point the well has to run dry, especially after such a long string
of great records spanning nearly a decade, so it seems oddly
prophetic that above the title of
Flush The Fashion it says: “Alice Cooper ’80″…take it as a
warning.
Flush The Fashion is also the first of a quad of “cult”
albums by Alice: all of these early 80’s albums were total
commercial failures, yet they contain a number of undiscovered
gems. So, first of all, he once again got himself a bunch of new
back up musicians but these guys just don’t have quite the same
technical or songwriting talent as his previous backing musicians.
The production is not too bad, but it’s a bit tinny with not enough
low end, and doesn’t have nearly the same depth of layered sound as
before. Overall it feels like a much thriftier work than past
releases.
He also noticeably changed his image with this album for the
first time since the late 60’s I’d say. Gone was the shock ghoul
horror look, and he replaced it with a very typical early 80’s
look, with the short hair and subtle makeup to look more
androgynous, which many bands at the time seemed to be doing at the
time (painful memories everyone? Ok, insert collective groan
here.), and he also started to wear a lot of military clothes…I
think my brother summed it up best when he said that Alice looked
like Adam Ant during this period! Of course, with such a drastic
change in image, obviously the musical style changed as well…that
means disco was out, new wave was in.
Yup, you got it: in a nutshell that means poppier melodies
accompanied by prominent use of cheesy, cheap sounding keyboards
(which I guess were high tech back then…man I feel old!),
synthesizers, and drum machines for an over-all colder, more
mechanical feel…and on much of the songs, Alice sounds very
emotionless, like a robot (goes with the military look I guess).
Like I said, very 80’s.
Commercially, this album didn’t do too horribly, but I think
that’s because it was still coasting on the success of
From The Inside before people realized the big change here.
“Clones (We’re All)” was a small hit, but this is the one that had
his fans crying sell-out, with it’s typical of the time totally
cheesy-yet-funny-enough-to-be-interesting-and-cool A-ha style
keyboard riff. I think it’s a great song and it’s easily the best
one on this album…kinda reminds me actually of Gary Numan’s hit
“Cars”, which came out a year earlier.
You know, upon first exposure I really didn’t like
Flush The Fashion, but on further listens and despite the
big change in style to a sort of post punk new wave sound, this
album isn’t bad at all. The melodies are very catchy and well
developed, and some of the songs are so strange that it’s actually
quite enjoyable upon further listens. Just listen to such bizarre
punky-rock-dance-pop nuggets as “Grim Facts”, “Model Citizen”,
“Headlines” (a hilarious stab at the pursuit of celebrity), and the
truly strange “Aspirin Damage” (which I’m surprised he didn’t get
sued over). This is also the first album since the 1969 debut
Pretties For You on which Alice abandons his gut-wrenching
growl and does a weird sort of talk-singing.
I still think the stripped down arrangements and tinny 80’s
production are not up to Alice’s standards however. Most “hip”
bands at the time adopted the punk aesthetic of everything having
to be bare bones minimalist to be more “authentic”, and I guess
Alice felt the need to adapt himself to this new mentality in order
to remain relevant. He was living on borrowed time though because
this album yielded his last minor hit song (“Clones”) until that
godawful
Trash album 9 years later. It’s a very decent entry in his
extensive discography, but I certainly don’t recommend it as a
starting point.