Album Review: Detroit Stories by Alice Cooper

The first Alice Cooper album I listened to in full was Trash. I was a tennager and it was a time in my life when I started to take a real interest in music. For Alice Cooper, Trash was a comeback album which became a smash. With the help of Desmond Child, a songwriter who is responsible for some of the biggest hits of the 80’s, Alice Cooper became current.  

Decades on, Trash sounds more dated than Cooper’s earlier 70s albums. This new album, Detroit Stories, has more in common with the earlier classic Cooper.

The songs here have a real raunch and roll feel and there is a direct straight ahead humour. In some ways this album is not to be taken too seriously. One song tells a story of a five year old who is bored until they find a rock n roll radio station. Another song describes someone getting out of jail and raising hell with a girlfriend. Yet another song tells the story of a man who is infatuated with a woman he philosophises with. The woman is then described as ‘a devil with angel eyes.’    

The songs are littered with some interesting one liners. Consider ‘I saw you baby and I pissed my pants,’ or ‘We are all pessimistic creeps.’ This is the stuff of real life. These songs tell stories of rooted people, often struggling in one way or another. There is still humour in that. There is a certain quality in this humour, in the acknowledgment that we are all flawed in some way. These songs are therefore a way of expressing solidarity. 

Near the end of the album, there is a touching moment when Cooper leaves the telephone number for a suicide prevention helpline as part of the track Hanging on by a Thread - Don’t Give Up. Despite the theatre of Cooper’s music, here is a moment where he shows a concern for real people. 

This is an album I will go back to from time to time. Here I will find a proper artist at work.

Review by Glenn Robinson

Single Review: Floating House by Michey Tree

Working a corporate job can feel suffocating. There are the unwritten rules of behaviour that many find restrictive, there is the unclarity of purpose and the subtle impact about how we think about ourselves and the world. 

Michey Tree explores such themes in her song Floating Tree. She sings, “Corrupt and corporate with suits and ties / Corrupt and corporate, they tell you lies.” 

Such haziness is conveyed musically. There is a chorus-echo effect on the guitar, the vocal delivery trails at the end of sentences. Emotionally, there is drunkenness in Floating House; as if someone is struggling to somehow rise above it all. 

This muted desperation really comes across performance wise. This is a beautiful track, despite or perhaps because of the darkness. There is a real human quality in this song, a proper truthfulness. 

Review by Glenn Robinson

EP Review: Gravity by George Glew

George Glew has a phenomenal voice that soars. The Gravity EP collects five songs together, under the associated themes of space, gravity, light, astronauts and dreams. 

Glew’s soaring voice is important in this respect. It can act like a rocket, defying gravity, much like the way an astronaut would experience freedom: for a short time only.

The title track associates the idea of gravity with those natural everyday things that can weigh a person down. This ‘limiting’ idea is used in contrast to the human spirit, which can only overcome so many battles. Glew sings, “I know you find your way out every time / But it's only so damn much / You can take before you break inside.”

The song Astronaut takes a contrary tact. The subject of the song is already in space, floating above the world of everyday troubles. Glew does not want the responsibility of bringing someone back down to earth. Glew does not want to act like gravity. 

At the midpoint of this musical journey, one then faces up to the ugly truth that, “Oh, how it kills me /To know you're alright.” In this new configuration, the laws of the universe seem to have changed along with Glew’s place within it. Now that the subject of his devotion no longer needs him, there is burning resentment. 

This metaphorical rocket is falling to earth. Glew cannot call out - there being no sound in space. The song Satellites offers up new possibilities, however. In telecommunications, he can receive what he needs from his beloved. He needs the calming of the seas, he needs to see through the rain. 

There is no happy ending. The EP’s last track, Dream Song, ends in dissolution. Glew begins to grasp onto the requirement of self sufficiency: “I'm forgetting how to breathe / While you drift out of reach / And I'm trying to find a meaning.” Needing to get on with the business of everyday living, the search for meaning needs to be placed to one side, so one can remember how to breathe.

Waking up from the spell of an ecstatic love, then from an existential misery, small things start to matter again. The EP tracks this journey, in an impressive way. With each song approaching the same subject matter from a different angle, the collection works like a hermeneutical circle. There is not one truth, or one ultimate perspective. Rather, there are different moments in time and space, experienced differently.

Review by Glenn Robinson   

Single Review: Forgive or Forget by Sarah Close

There is something beatlesque in this song. It is in the vocal melodies, I think. In some parts, the vocal variation occurs at the end of the third line, trailing off somewhere new, creating an emotional lift. The touch is light but the added sonic texture brings a human quirkiness and I am immediately disarmed. I want to listen. I am ready.    

The song is conversational in tone. It is a song about one lover on the cusp of a decision, who requires some form of disclosure from their partner. It is a song about a moment in time that could change the future of the relationship, where the call for truth becomes the highest value. 

It is a beautiful moment the song captures.

Review by Glenn Robinson

Single Review: Rare by Frances

Here you will find a careful and subtle articulation of an expressed love, rarified in a safe place where only two people exist. Listening to this song, reminds me of a distant chamber, far above the street noises below. The song is almost silent. Breathing in such a place can be difficult; the air thinner. There is comfort and understanding in this chamber. 

‘When somebody says you're different / When they open up a scar / When they stare until their heads remember / Who you are.’

There is an intimacy not only in the words but also how they are sung. Here you will find an imagined place that brings us closer to heaven. It is a place where the beloved is fully seen. It is a place where defences are not necessary.    

This sense of defencelessness is really what makes the song work. Defencelessness is so closely tied to intimacy, of being in a place of safety and vulnerability. 

This song reminds me of a rare form of desire, where the desire for comfort or not needing to be on one's guard, forges the way towards the road of acceptance.  

Review by Glenn Robinson

Single Review: Virtual Reality by Renforshort

The musical textures on this track are remarkable. There is a wooden sound to the acoustic guitar, electronic hand claps, distorted singing as if a Zoom call is freezing.  

The lyrics are playful too; the opening lines are so simply condensed they operate like a Zip file: “18 plugged in and out of touch/ I think sometimes I think too much/ Self diagnosed with self sabotage.” One thought is falling on top of the other, meaning merges to create a sense of spacelessness. Everything is becoming 2D and so the yearning to return to childhood and wide open space becomes a new non-presence. 

This song is probably more relevant than it has ever been. While we have been staying at home due to government restrictions, our sense of reality is under severe pressure. The enormity of  what is happening in the outside world compounds the virtual reality of the internet like never before. 

There is no resolution yet. Just the interchange of images & feelings in an eternal loop. Only a desire for ‘something real’ opens up the possibility of change. 

Review by Glenn Robinson