School's Out - ALICE COOPER****

School's Out/Luney Tune/Gutter Cat Vs The Jets/Street Fight/Blue Turk/My Stars/Public Animal No. 9/Alma Mater/Grande Finale

Prior to the release of School’s Out the American hard rock group Alice Cooper were little known in the UK. This would all change when the title track topped the singles chart. For the next couple of years Cooper and his band would be one of the leading players in the British music scene. (US:2 UK:4)

“Alice Cooper is interesting, misunderstood, and hard to classify. Many have placed his music in the hard rock category, but in listening to the range of music on this LP I find jazz, rock, hard rock, progressive rock, instrumentals, and even a song that sounds like a Broadway show tune.”

“Mostly not as heavy as the legendary war-marching hard rocker that is the title track. It is rather artsy and proggy in many parts, the jazzy Blue Turk being of special note. Alma Mater presents a nicely sentimental song, showing off Cooper's '60s leanings.”

“School's Out will be best remembered for its timeless, class title track, and chunks of the album loosely revolve around a dark spirited, school daze theme, that results in an ambitious, theatrical release.”

“There's a certain over indulgence that would eventually lead to Cooper’s downfall from the charts that begins to creep into the picture on School's Out. It's a shame too, because there's some pretty good material here among the cartoonish stuff. Chief among the stand outs has to be the great title cut. For those of us who found ourselves in Junior High when School's Out was all over the radio, there's a certain joy that still stirs when that opening guitar riff is heard.”

“School's Out departed from both the sound and the lyrical themes that the band had established on Love It To Death and Killer. The band apparently decided to take a break from the creepy, horror-movie rock 'n' roll, and instead make a semi-concept album about high school and juvenile delinquency. The songs, while good, venture into silliness once or twice too often. And, rather than continue to experiment with gross-out subject matter, they experimented this time around with jazzy sounds and Broadway theatrics.”