Alice Cooper - Lace And Whiskey
Warner Bros Records - 1977
3.0/10
Alice Cooper having short hair has to be some sort of indication that the future is uncertain. Lace And Whiskey could have swung in to revive us of the mistakes made on the somewhat decent but flawed Goes To Hell. Instead, things appear to sink even more. Somewhere along the lines of Pretties For You quality, this disc reeks of being unsure about any direction. Difference is, now there’s no excuse for being rookie or having poor budgets.
The saving grace here is the title track, one that more than likely was good by accident. It’s held up entirely by the basswork and keyboards with an operatic feel. The chorus just has so much life, and I can’t deny the levels of rhythmic flavor this has. Outside of that, it’s a game of tossing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks, which is basically none of it. The cover of the classic “Ubangi Stomp” didn’t even manage to hold much adhesive here. A slight attempt at more alternative takes that show later in the new-wave albums peek a bit, but again, nothing of it is really what I would call flattering.
Furthermore, Lace And Whiskey is guilty of one of the worst crimes in the Cooper Career: “You And Me.” If you took some of the stupidest lyrics, blended them with music that sounds like elevator music in a retirement home, and coated it with uncharming vocal delivery, you’d have this song. “My God” is an absolute joke of a song that fails hard at using the church-vibes to its advantage, and I’m really not even sure what the aim was for “King Of The Silver Screen”. Mess after mess.
Even the songs that aren’t terrible are mediocre and uninteresting at best. Every time I revisit this album, it’s like hearing it for the first time. Not because it’s just that incredible, but because I have zero memory on what the ones that aren’t so bad they stay in my brain sound like. If the title track wasn’t so good, there wouldn’t be a single thing worth hearing on this.
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