675. Alice Cooper / Pretties For You. 1969. 2.5/5

This is where it all began for the Alice Cooper Band, and it is mostly unrecognisable from the material that made Alice Cooper famous. It is an interesting step back in time to listen to, hearing the kind of music that was prominent when Alice started back in 1968, to the material he then published through the various decades that followed.

This is a very psychedelic album, much as was the style in the late 1960's. Most of the album is almost Beatles-esque from that era, especially from the sound they were putting out with Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but it is also reminiscent of that era's Pink Floyd and Frank Zappa and other 'flower power' artists. It's a real effort to get through this album in a normal setting. It just isn't the kind of album you will put on for enjoyment value and listen to. Now, if you dropped a couple of tabs of acid beforehand, you would probably get a great deal more out of it! In general, with this kind of psychedelic mish-mash, it would have to be the norm. There is so much going on in all of the songs, and it doesn't always feel as though there is any rhyme or reason to what is being played. In some songs, such as "Sing Low, Sweet Cheerio" it feels like they are just doing a Spinal Tap free form jazz experimentation. It sounds just like a rehearsal room jam session which they ended up liking and putting on the album. Drums, guitars, bass, even the harmonica, all seem to be coming in and out as the musician pleases. That's not to say it's bad, but you really need to be in the right frame of mind to listen to it.

Of course, much of the experience of Alice Cooper, especially in these early days, was the stage show, and the antics that occurred during live performances. As a result this first studio album doesn't really convey to the listener what they would have been missing visually, and in this respect it would be easy to just write this off and dismiss it. But to do so would be hasty. Given an ability and desire to sit back and listen to the album a few times, you can find plenty to appreciate here. Once you are acquainted with the methodology of the structure of the album, it becomes easier to relate to, easier to accept the meshing of instruments in a random kind of noise, easier to come to terms with the fact that Alice sounds a little spookily like John Lennon in places ("Changing Arranging" especially), and easier to find where all of this develops from this starting point into what soon became a band that took hard rock by storm, with songs like "B.B. on Mars" and "Reflected" especially sounding this way. "Reflected" was eventually reworked and became re-recorded as "Elected' a few years later, so the roots of what the band became are certainly present here.

For those who are familiar with Alice Cooper's later work, listening to this for the first time would be like hopping into a different dimension. And though you may never come to really like this album, it is certainly worth listening to it if for no other reason than to see what progression was made through the years by this most enduring artist.