Band:	Alice Cooper
Album:	Flush The Fashion
Style:	Hard rock, Glam rock
Release date:	1980

01. Talk Talk [The Music Machine cover]
02. Clones (We're All)
03. Pain
04. Leather Boots
05. Aspirin Damage
06. Nuclear Infected
07. Grim Facts
08. Model Citizen
09. Dance Yourself To Death
10. Headlines

Flush The Fashion kicked off what would become Alice Cooper's least successful decade, both musically and personally. Tormented by various addictions and functioning erratically at best, the emaciated and errant Alice decided yet again to pursue a different sound for his 12th album.

Alice wrote most of these songs in conjunction with Elton John's longtime guitarist, Davey Johnstone, and his future keyboardist, Fred Mandel. This unusual combination results in an album that can best be described as The Best of The Cars Sung by Alice Cooper (with just a dose of Huey Lewis & The News). As distinctly dissimilar from Alice's past work as such a thing sounds, the formula pays off for the first half of the album; the jangly guitars and prominent synth lines of "Talk Talk" and "Clones (We're All)" suggest that Alice could have a future here. His vocals might be unusually clean and the songs might be surprisingly friendly, but Alice is a true chameleon; he wears many colors and he wears them well, for the most part. The main question is which colors deserve wearing.

The back cover reveals the source of this New Wave experiment: an uncomfortably clean-cut Alice Cooper sporting fully-tamed hair, a noticeable absence of makeup, and a lot less Alice than we're used to seeing. 1980 was not a good year for Alice, as evidenced by his corpse-like stare and fractured sense of self. He had no real band to speak of, and was fighting a losing battle with his career; the strong themes of missing identity in these songs offer insight into his mindset.

As an Alice Cooper album, Flush The Fashion makes no sense whatsoever. As an artifact of the New Wave tide that rose to prominence around that time, it sounds very dated, but not altogether kitschy; reasonably old-fashioned, but not drowned by being shackled to a fleeting point in time. A few gems like "Pain" still have charm, and after some time to assimilate it, the album isn't all that bad.

Yet, when all is said and done, this album cannot defend itself from criticism. The gaily flourishing flute effects of "Model Citizen," semi-autobiographical misery of "Aspirin Damage," and uninspired selection of off-the-rack rock riffs do nothing but reinforce the unfortunate impression of a disinterested Alice on autopilot. Flush The Fashion, for its occasional successes, runs out of life quickly and, likely because of his questionable involvement, poorly captures Alice's true spirit and personality. It stands more as a forgotten point of interest that hardcore fans might find appealing than anything else.