Album Review: Alice Cooper - Pretties For You

Alice Cooper - Pretties For You

Straight Records - 1969

5/10

It’s really weird looking at the debut Alice Cooper record in hindsight. If you’ve done any digging on the older demos, and look at the band’s largest influences, I struggle to figure how they came to this Zappa-esque trainwreck. Obviously, one could say Pretties For You took its influence from Frank, but there’s a lot more behind it than that, especially when you jump to the serious shift presented on the record following only a year later. Its main flaw is making up for the lack of direction with all sorts of odd noise, build-up, and sound tampering.

Outside of all of the pointless noise and whiny tones, there is some semblance of decent chops. The usage of harmonicas, progressive-style solos, and jarring vocal chants aren’t bad as a concept, but the fact is, they go nowhere most of the time. Picture eating a cake without the actual cake and just the icing (which some of you probably like, and is how I justify people liking this album). Strong toppings and interesting ideas boasted upon zero foundation.

As far as songs that are actually good the entire way through, I can come up with only two. Five tracks in, “Living” manages to scrape all of the little things the first four songs do right into one enjoyable hit. It’s got your psychedelic Beatles vibes with denser guitar tones, and smooth melodic vocals. I’ll also go to bat for “Reflected,” but it’s tough to count this one knowing that it was remade into a much better song five albums into the future. Some parts in between such as the mid-section of “Fields Of Regret” are alright, and really the takeaway is to look out for the center-focused areas of the album. But even then, it’s hard to find standouts between the tracks.

Pretties For You, as rough as it is, is still something that I’m glad exists, as someone who got into Alice Cooper 40 years after their band started. Despite being a mess, it’s fun to look at in comparison to everything else. I’d take it over a few of the extremely dull 2000s albums, and it still manages to get a listen roughly once a year.