ALICE COOPER IN SUMMERLAND: FLUSH THE FASHION BY ALEX BODEN

7/9/2018

by alex boden

When I was around the age of five years old, there were two Alice Cooper songs I would listen to constantly, "Halo of Flies" and "Clones (We're All)."

Clones was the second to last track on an Alice Cooper best of CD that saw frequent play time in my CD player--as in it practically lived in that thing for years. I remember wearing the CD booklet out looking at the collage of all of his album covers that had been placed in the back of the book. Even then the album art that stuck out to me the most was Flush the Fashion. While all the other covers had something interesting going on artistically, Flush the Fashion was this beige colored square with the name scratched on the front with nothing else and for some reason or another it piqued my interest . It wasn't until a few years later, I was probably about seven or eight that I snagged my Dad's copy one Sunday morning and decided to give it a try.

From the first listen I was hooked, I listened to it twice in a row that day and after that it was a once a week Sunday affair for me. Since then I've probably listened to Flush the Fashion dozens of times and I'm still certain that out of all of his albums it's still my personal favorite. It's an odd departure from the previous album, the shift from songs that sounded similar to musical numbers and soft rock ballads to straight up post punk/New Wave is jarring to say the least, and while some people may not find it all particularly impressive I feel that its strengths lie in the uniqueness of the lyrics and just how quirky the album is from start to finish.

"Talk Talk" starts the album which is just almost a straight up rock tune if not for the synths that kick in for a few seconds part ways in. It then fades into "Clones" which is a flat out New Wave track and was the only semi-hit off the entire album. "Clones" then fades out and my personal favorite track, "Pain." That one being a first person narrative from the emotion itself, sounds kinda corny but damned if it doesn't work. That is follwoed by 'Leather Boots" which is just a cheesy little pop song. "Aspirin Damage" is a mutation of old Alice paranoia with new alternative trappings. Where in "Nucelar Infected" is another slab of off kilter synth rock.

The whole album does this thing where all of the songs are connected to each other, not really thematically or even musically most of the time but songs are often ended rather abruptly and then the next track instantly picks up, leaving almost no room for silence during the 20 or so minutes the album lasts.

Lyrically most of the album makes little to no sense most of the time, with some exceptions being maybe "Pain", "Grim Facts", is followed by "Model Citizen" which featrues some of Cooper's patented snark and sneer. The n we get the ode to obnoxious yuppies, "Dance Yourself to Death" and then the album closes out on "Headlines." I think "Headlines" highlights this best with lines talking about stealing a float at the Rose parade followed up by popping up out of a cake at the Presidents ball.

If I had to come up with a term that best describes the songwriting on this album, I'd call it pre-internet Schizo-posting put onto a rock album, and that's mostly what I love about it. It's just so offbeat and quirky I just don't understand how anyone couldn't love it It's things like that make up the album for the most part, most likely due to Alice no longer being sober and having admitted later on not remembering anything about writing Flush the Fashion through DaDa. But as I said earlier that's part of the albums charm for me, something only a nutty drunken madman could've come up with.
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Bio:

Alex Boden is a bright young man. He is John Boden's son and that may or may not always make him happy. He has an amazing encyclopedic knowledge of music, most 80's and covering most styles. If one were to challenge him to a duel, say sarcasm at dawn, well, I pity that poor bastard as Alex is the Lucas McCain of snarky wit and sarcasm. He doesn't write and was only lured to this project because he loves Alice Cooper and his Dad might have bullied him.