Destroyer - Kiss

 

Provenance: Lost to the mists of time. There's no great story behind this one. I suspect I bought it after enjoying Kiss' Double Platinum compilation.

Review: Five-and-a-half years ago I reviewed Destroyed by Sloppy Seconds, which features cover art that sends-up that of Destroyer. Sloppy Seconds were (are?) a scrappy Indianapolis punk band with a cult following. Kiss are globe-bestriding monsters of arena rock. Yet the Sloppy Seconds offering knocks this into a cocked hat. In this instance, the apprentice quite easily bests the master.

On the basis of this (and the other Kiss album I've reviewed so far) I can only conclude that the band's enduring popularity is built squarely on their Alive! series of live recordings. Why? Because in the studio, they were absolute tripe.

There are precisely two listenable songs on Destroyer - opener 'Detroit Rock City' and 'Shout It Out Loud'. The former is a song I could listen to practically any time of day or night, although I could do without the prelude. This consists of a whole minute of your life listening to a fake radio station and the most underpowered car in the world starting up. It sounds like the pump in my fish tank. However, once into the meat of the track it's a different story - a headrush of cool bass riffs, hysterical vocals and drink driving. It even squeezes in Space Ace (maybe?) playing a distinctive, flamenco-tinged solo. It would be reasonable to surmise after this barnstorming opener that the rest of Destroyer is gonna rock.

Well, sorry to dash your cherished hopes 'n' dreams, because it's a precipitous slide downhill thereafter. It's not that the songs are, in and of themselves, terrible, once you remove lyrics, singing and execution from the mix.

To give 'King of the Night Time World' its due, it's about the last time 'Starchild' Paul Stanley sounds relatively human. It would even be a decent song if played by a decent band. But this is Kiss, starring Peter Criss on drums, a guy who makes Moe Tucker sound like Terry Bozzio. Bob Ezrin does his best to bury some of the more rancid stuff, but his 'jazz influenced' hi-hat work is splashed across 'King...' like puttanesca sauce down a crisp white t-shirt. Next up is 'God of Thunder', with Gene Simmons sounding like he's trying to burp up a hot-dog over the a plodding backbeat.

However - at least these are, at a foundational level, heavy rock songs, no matter how ham-handed they've been rendered. What the fuck is 'Great Expectations'? It's sopping wet, with a syrupy string arrangement and underscored by a horrid, shrill choir. I don't know what it's trying to achieve other than being the most suck-ass thing ever committed to vinyl; and even then it's a failure, because it's not even the biggest pile of horseshit on Destroyer. 'Flaming Youth' is okay, I guess, if you like Sweet b-sides sung by Paul Lynde. 'Sweet Pain' meanwhile just sounds inept; how Bob Ezrin heard this and thought "yeah, that sounds like four guys all playing in the same room at the same time" is a mystery.

At least there is some respite in the form of the aforementioned 'Shout It Out Loud', which is gloriously dumb, as opposed to plain dumb - a big, hooky invitation to get down and party, Kiss-style! What makes this track pop so much - the maracas? No matter, 'Shout It Out Loud' has got the wow factor - a cool descending piano riff, a chorus so sticky that even the Men In Black would struggle to wipe it from memory and handclaps that seem to be in the right place. It's an island of fun and kineticism in an ocean of sclerosis. Perhaps Destroyer finishes on a flourish..

Hol' up, there, pard'ner! This here's 'Beth' country! Yes, 'Beth', winner of a People's Choice Award in 1977, is a proper stinker. It makes 'Great Expectations' sound like Napalm Death, a track that Captain and Tennille would've rejected for being too drippy. Peter Criss gets to sing, which could be fine, as he did the lead vocals on actual good song 'Black Diamond'. Alas, here he seems to think he's the next Rod Stewart, croaking away over a sea of piano 'n' strings schmaltz. It's the nadir not only of Destroyer but 1970s rock - which whips ass in general - altogether. Here's a fun call back: 'Beth' made its US television debut on the Paul Lynde Halloween Special, where Kiss performed alongside such luminaries as Florence Henderson, Billy Barty and the Osmonds. (In the interests of fairness and balance, here's Kiss doing a great mime job with 'Detroit Rock City' on the same show.)

'Beth' isn't the final word on Destroyer - that honour goes to 'Do You Love Me?', which is alright-ish but like trying to wash your mouth out with a thimble of Listerine after gargling sewage for three whole minutes. It would play better for me today if I didn't believe Paul Stanley sincerely meant every single narcissistic word. 

Apparently many Kiss fans think Destroyer is the band's best studio album. God almighty! You know, I might actually prefer Hot In The Shade (though I'm in no massive hurry to confirm this). Clearly - and it's obvious from live footage - Kiss are a band best witnessed in person, all their theatrics and whizz-bangs undoubtedly part of the appeal. Hell, I've seen 'em live and it was top entertainment. The bones of good rock songs are there on Destroyer, and they become fully-fleshed in the live arena. Nonetheless when sat at home, listening to their studio efforts, Kiss come across as a pallid, even timid, version of themselves.

Loud And Clear - Autograph

Provenance: In my mid-teens I made a series of compilation CDs that consisted wholly of stuff I'd downloaded from Napster. They bounced all over the place in terms of genre, there were five of them all told, and I'm very sorry that I can't locate them any longer.

Disc three had 'Turn Up The Radio' by Autograph as the lead off track, a real fizzer. Anyway, some years later one of the many smooth-brained fuckwits that post on the message board I used to frequent convinced me to invest in a few Autograph albums, as apparently the material was of a uniformly high quality.

Our survey said...

Review: ...EEEH-EEEURGH!

Apparently, I'm lucky enough to be in possession of a 'remastered and reloaded' edition of Loud And Clear, according to the Rock Candy blurb. I guess that's analogous to gazing at a turd on an ultra-high definition TV set. Where the turd wins out is that, mercifully, it makes no sound. Ironically, the remastered Loud And Clear sounds like it was recorded at the bottom of my toilet, so it's anybody's guess just how wretched this bilge was back in 1987 the first time around.

It's difficult for me to say much, clever or otherwise, about Loud And Clear because melodic hard-rock this generic almost defies description. I recall that in a When Saturday Comes review of benighted reality show Wayne Rooney's Street Striker, Simon Tyers described the set layout as "an advertising copywriter's view of what constitutes a back street"; and there are parallels here. If you asked a competent session musician unburdened by too much knowledge of 1980s rock to knock out a few tunes reminiscent of the era, it would sound an awful lot like Loud And Clear.

Also, I know this seems gratuitously sneery, but in an age where frontmen had cool fucking names (if nothing else), Steve Plunkett just don't do it. Steve Plunkett sounds like the guy who organises the office rugby world cup sweepstake. Steve Plunkett makes everyone a coffee, even if he doesn't drink it himself. Steve Plunkett writes a column for the programme of his local non-league football team. Steve Plunkett is a massive dweeb. The bar that Autograph had to step over to have an acceptable 1980s frontman nom-de-guerre was not high - you make the cut by finding one better than Steve 'Sex' Summers in my estimation - so it's almost impressive that they managed to limbo spectacularly beneath it.

I don't even feel like describing the music at any length; it almost feels sufficient to say that I prefer Bad English. All the up-tempo songs are moronic, and feature the same uninspired freeze-dried guitar work that is mildly admirable from a technical standpoint and utterly forgettable. If I was forced to be charitable (oxymoron, I know, I know) I might actually pick the ballad-y 'Everytime I Dream' as a not particularly shit piece of music. Also, I am not entirely ill-disposed towards 'Just Got Back From Heaven', which boasts some cute keyboard work. It's a shame that they don't use the keyboard with a bit more flair, as it's mostly deployed to parp unimaginatively underneath equally pedestrian chord sequences.

Just some variety, that's all I crave. I don't know why Autograph even bothered with a drummer on Loud And Clear because some kind of machine would've been more than capable at replicating the dull, potatoes 'n' potatoes percussion. This is a problem endemic to much 1980s arena rock; they took the wallop from big the previous decade's big hitters like John Bonham and Cozy Powell but discarded the attendant skill and creativity. Perhaps it was a conscious decision; I remember a documentary where Def Leppard talked about stripping down riffs and fills to their basics to ensure clarity in cavernous venues. I find myself speculating as to whether this was also the thought-process behind Loud And Clear - uncomplicated, no rough edges, choruses that could be sung by the most tin-eared amongst us - but unlike the Leps, they forgot to write anything memorable. Def Leppard? They're not even vying with Loverboy.

So, yeah, that's Autograph's Loud And Clear I suppose. Not the most thrilling review, but I'm not working with much here. This one's destined to gather dust, although now it'll go back on top of the pile and I'm worried that a houseguest will see it and think I like Autograph. On a final note; I mentioned in my intro that I paid for three Autograph albums. Only two showed up. At the time I was vexed, but now I look back and see nothing less than a small act of mercy on the part of the vendor. Once upon a time, Autograph exhorted me to 'turn up the radio', and if that's the alternative to actually listening to Autograph's dreadful music it's an invitation I'd be more than happy to accept, even if the dial was stuck on a talkSPORT Danny Mills marathon.