Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

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Consumer Guide Album

Alice Cooper: Killer [Warner Bros., 1971]
A taste for the base usages of hard rock rarely comes with a hit attached these days, much less "surreal," "theatrical," and let us not forget "transvestite" trappings, which is why some desperate rock and rollers have convinced themselves their prayers are being answered. But while this is the band's most song-oriented LP, it falters after "Under My Wheels" and "Be My Lover," neither of them an "I'm Eighteen" in the human outreach department. And only one of the three "theatrical" extravaganzas, "Dead Babies," works on record (never mind in the theatre). B−