A look at SEXUAL SAVIOR

[tuneylune]

To me, Neal Smith is an ultimate rock star; Cool, approachable, down to earth, funny and an excellent musician. Indeed, in my "Top Ten" for drummers, would put him at #4 behind John Bonham (powerful, inventive and steady throughout Zep's career), Keith Moon (a better drummer than Bonham, but lost steam in his last few years)and Neil Peart (after SIGNALS, most of Rush has left me cold, but Peart continues to impress). His performances on the ACG ,BDB and BDS albums are most satisfying and he is a flamboyant stage performer- In his book, PEOPLE ARE CRAZY HERE, Rex Reed wrote about Alice Cooper on the KILLER tour at Passaic NJ and described Neal "Going bananas under his 40 pounds of unwashed hair" during the performance. And despite the ACG's disavowal of Bob Greene's BILLION DOLLAR BABY, Greene's description of Neal in performance does mesh with footage I've seen.
The biggest trouble with SEXUAL SAVIOR is, despite the good production by Neal and Peter Catucci is the hostility throughout as well as the profanity and downright vulgar tone of much of the songs and photos in the booklet (I'm no prude either, but a little does go a long way). I, for one, am tired of rockers flashing me the "Bird" in photos and it makes no sense for a wealthy respected 60-something realtor/rocker doing this for "Leave Me Alone" which opens the album with an almost PRETTIES FOR YOU guitar tone before slamming along with the subtlety of a jackhammer (Or maybe the photo was meant to portray the sociopath in the song). Indeed, almost all the album sounds like this with "Disturbed" being almost unlistenible-maybe it's also that Neal is practically growling all the songs-he's said he doesn't like his voice, but try a little variation. "Beware of The Dog" has some acoustic guitar and synth playing along with Neal singing in a lower register and is a little easier to get through.
A lot of the songs also try to do a TRASH outlook on sexual matters, but more crude than Alice would ever do. The title track is a great song with good guitar playing (Neal plays all the rhythym guitar, drums and other instruments) and sounds a lot like L7, but it , along with "The Naked and The Raw" and "Can't Get You Outta My Skull" pretty much reduce women to WASP-style objects and we have enough of that in music.
Oddly, as pointed out on STUK's albums and in Dale Sherman's book, there are three songs that could almost be part of ALONG CAME A SPIDER dealing with serial killers ("How Do You Bleed", "Thrill Thrill Thrill Shoot to Kill"-with Neal posing almost as James Bond" and "Monsters in the Attic") and the page for "Monsters" has Neal behind a drum with eight arms, almost beating Alice to the punch several months before ACAS.
The last two songs "Dynasty of Darkness" (sounding almost Black Sabbath-ish with great backing vocals and little bass solos by Catucci) and "Human Evolution" (full of audio clips, including The Beatles and Martin Luther King) are both quite good, ending the album on a high note.
So, as mentioned, good playing by all concerned, but think the album on the whole would have been better if Neal had cut back on the crudeness, worked with some outside writers , changed the style of his voice on some songs (or use Peter more-his back ups or solo spots do help out) and maybe a couple of instrumentals; before ACG, Neal played surf music and it would have been cool to hear something like that. As mentioned on STUK, the album does grow after several listens, but I can't picture many people willing to do that. Not bad, but could have been so much more. **1/2

[Seriously]

Thanks for the review, just played some of the samples on Amazon and to be honest I would probably buy this, but the price is prohibitive. It's not something you would play in mixed company I guess!

[tuneylune]

Thanks for the kind words-it does grow on you. Just don't play it for your Granny!
You might have luck on NealSmith.Com. Neal gets his orders filled quickly and I always got mine without too much waiting.