Album Review: Maryann Cotton - Hallelujah

I don't know if I've ever gotten the opportunity to comment on the topic, but with Maryann Cotton being billed as the "prince of shock rock", I can say a couple of things regarding that. Shock rock was always a terrible way to brand your music, because it removed any of the quality in favor of being titillating or offensive. Yes, Alice Cooper is famous to this day because of his stage antics, but how many of his songs have remained in the public consciousness? KISS has a string of them, but shock rock doesn't. Plus, after so many years, is anything actually shocking anymore? It's become such a misnomer that I have to groan at it. They are describing a sound that once existed that is not completely divorced from the meanings of the words involved. But enough about my issues with language.

There's another issue regarding shock rock that comes up pretty quickly; not only is the music not shocking, it doesn't really rock either. This is a rather soft album that relies as much on the cheap synth accompaniments as it does on the old-school riffing. When you see the imagery and the description, this is not the sound you expect to hear. There's a very real cognitive dissonance going on at first.

That being said, Maryann Cotton does have a way with a song. Though they might not be what you expect, the songs have a soft rock appeal with plenty of charm. The vocals have a lot of Alice Cooper in them, but the melodies are written smartly enough to work around those limitations, and enhance the best qualities. When they lean into their softer side, the songs really work. The title track and "I'm Your Saint" are both lovely tracks that use the extra sounds and the vocal harmonies to build a bigger track. There's even some power-pop to them, which only enhances the experience. Compared to the very straight-forward "Night In California", there's no comparison which direction is the best way for them to go.

In a way, this sort of reminds me of Lordi. You have a gruff voice singing rock with a heavy influence of pop melodies. The difference is that Lordi has seemed to become ashamed of what made them famous, which has only made them a worse band as time goes on and they try everything under the sun to avoid doing what they're best at. Maryann Cotton is, right now, happy to exist in a place where 'cheese' isn't a dirty word. It isn't overwhelming, but you know there's some tongue-in-cheek attitude in all of this. Not that it's a bad thing.

Despite being a short album, it does feel longer than its running time. Especially when "Those Things To Come" comes along, where it spends four minutes with little energy and almost spoken vocals, there isn't enough energy to keep things rolling. And that song, like "Night In California", doesn't boast much of a melody when they do try to kick things up a bit. The best songs are the ones that go in the more dramatic, 'orchestrated' direction. That's when everything comes alive, and unfortunately they don't carry that through the entire record. An entire album of songs like "Hallelujah" and "Eternal Love Forever" would be a wonderful blast of retro fun, but that's not quite what we get.

So yes, "Hallelujah" is a flawed record. There are some really good things about it, and a few that bring things down. I think things tilt enough toward the good side to still say it's a record I enjoyed listening to, but the blemishes do mean it's not a record I can get overly excited about. It's a nice way to spend some time, which might be enough.