Dennis Dunaway Project – Bones in the Yard – 2006
The first you hear when you put on Bones From the Yard and play it is something I would call oriental scales. It’s something you can’t put together with the original Alice Cooper Band sound or with one of its original members. It’s not a bad thing, quite the opposite in fact, but nothing to be expected at all. Soon you are totally in unison with the music and there’s a lot of interesting listening. It’s music that you don’t get tired of and that stays fresh for a long long time!
The first few songs on Bones From the Yard are pretty rough-sounding. It’s heavy music but it never passes the line of being Metal, in any form. It’s rather nicely produced and it sounds really good sound-wise. The oriental scales fit the music very well and It’s obvious that Dennis Dunaway has been a driving force with the composing, there is lots of interesting bass progressions and there’s nothing strange about that. I think you tend to write music with your main instrument in focus, just listen to Queens Another One Bites the Dust, where it’s obvious that John Deacon is the composer! If you compare with other songs by Queen where Freddie Mercury or Brian May is the composer you’ll hear a big difference in approach.
But the bass guitar emphasis doesn’t follow the album sound all the way – fortunately. It sounds quite different even in the second song and it sounds even better actually! The retro sound it more prominent and it’s obvious that Dennis Dunaway wasn’t “just” the bass player in the original Alice Cooper Band. He was influential when it came to songwriting as well, he was part of creating some of the very best songs from that classical era. The sound then jumps back and forth between “modern” and the retro sound and I guess you could say it’s kind of eclectic in that manner. I think it’s a good thing and what I really want to point on is the versatility of the music and the album as a whole!
Bones From the Yard has a pretty high average, the best songs are really great and the lesser great songs are not bad either, just not masterpieces. The quality of the songs is quite high despite the styles being so different is what I mean to say. It keeps the music dynamic and not static which is a big danger with albums where the songs are great but too similar to each other. This sounds fresh even if you listen to it man many times!
But I won’t deny that it is the retro-sounding songs that attract me the most. They could easily have been part of Love It to Death, Killer, or Billion Dollar Babies which are the albums I like the most with the old Alice Cooper Band and if you like the band I almost dare to promise that you’ll love parts of this album too. It’s the first few songs in particular. Me and My Boys smells like rough rock from the seventies and Man is a Beast and Red Room, where Dennis Dunaway sings lead, is nicely dopy. And either of those or perhaps Little Kid (With a Big, Big Gun) could all be the best song of the album!
I’m happy that I got the opportunity to experience this album, it was a very entertaining treat and I will definitely keep my eyes open for other projects with Dennis Dunaway in the future.
