Band:	Alice Cooper
Album:	Dirty Diamonds
Style:	Hard rock, Glam rock
Release date:	August 2005

01. Woman Of Mass Distraction
02. You Make Me Wanna
03. Perfect
04. Dirty Diamonds
05. Pretty Ballerina
06. Sunset Babies (All Got Rabies)
07. Zombie Dance
08. The Saga Of Jesse Jane
09. Six Hours
10. Steal That Car
11. Run Down The Devil
12. Your Own Worst Enemy
13. Stand [feat. Xzibit][bonus]
14. The Sharpest Pain [Russian and Australian bonus]

With bands such as Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party occupying high positions in the charts and appearing regularly on MTV2, it only made sense for Alice Cooper to go back to his garage rock roots. After all, much of contemporary popular rock uses exactly the same aesthetic conventions as those pioneered by Alice, MC5 and The Stooges (among others) in the early 70s. Dirty Diamonds is the second such stripped down album by Cooper, following 2003's superb The Eyes Of Alice Cooper. Personally, I don't think he managed to top the previous release but Dirty Diamonds is still filled with great music and a lot of fun.

Although garage rock minimalism is very much the aesthetic of choice here, this does in no way mean that Dirty Diamonds is not a varied record. On the contrary, I think people tend to forget just how much variety there was on seminal albums like School's Out and Billion Dollar Babies and the new record follows this trend. We have a number of sleazy, yet slick rockers, such as the wonderful opener "Woman Of Mass Distraction", the title track and the very clever "Sunset Babies". We also have the obligatory party tunes ("Steal That Car", "Run Down The Devil", "My Own Worst Enemy") and the deliberately cheesy ballad ("Six Hours") but then, we also have the few gems that all real Alice fans are always on the lookout for. Take "The Saga Of Jesse Jane" - a country-western track with exaggerated Johnny Cash-like vocals and one of the best opening lines in music history (I'm in jail in a Texas town/In my sister's wedding gown). The serene cover of the Left Banke's "Pretty Balerina" is similarly wacky and as such extremely successful. Finally, "Zombie Dance" is the creepy southern-gothic tinged rocker that Rob Zombie has been trying to record for the last decade or so.

All in all, Dirty Diamonds is a really great album that makes up for its lack of focus with the pure genius of some of its particular ideas. Definitely one of Alice's best albums and easily one of the finest albums of 2005.