Next…

Huh. I wonder what these cunning linguists are singing about!

My Lotd, how much cocaine was consumed during the making of this album?

I mean, it kinda blows the blues away- might bring crabs right back with it?

Precursor to horny white guy hair metal?

The lyrics are so bad - it deserves a negative rating but honestly, musically…it actually rocks pretty hard.

This is kind of awesome, actually? Saw a couple of people compare it to Alice Cooper who I generated yesterday, but unlike that album which felt too childish in its message, this is just a wild ride from start to finish.

2.0

Sleazy, theatrical and aggressively 70s - feels like something Rocky Horror Show's Frank N Furter would listen to in his downtime.

I think there should be a rule where any album that mentions gonorrhea automatically gets the lowest rating possible

Alright, I've at least heard of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band from one of the many artists who covered "The Faith Healer" on this record. Fronted by singer-songwriter Alex Harvey, this Scottish glam rock act was well known for blending blues, hard rock, and cabaret, and for incorporating theatrical performances into their sets. Hell, the band members themselves dressed up as harlequins and other vaudeville-type folk for their shows.

As for the music on their second record, Next, I can see how it influenced Bon Scott-era AC/DC and early Nick Cave. This is full-on cock rock, between Zal Cleminson's loud guitar riffs, Hugh McKenna's hard-hitting piano work, the tight rhythm section of Chris Glen and Ted McKenna, and Alex Harvey's electrifying, abrasive vocals. That latter element is especially poignant here, as Alex is poised in the center of the mix, offering such crass tales of fervent sexual desire that aren't even thinly veiled, including the rampant euphemisms throughout "Swampsnake" and "The Last of the Teenage Idols" and him putting his hands on someone's body under the pretext of being a supposed religious figure on "The Faith Healer." There's even a song called "Gang Bang", for crying out loud. But for as much as Alex Harvey penned some truly graphic tunes, his choices of covers were just as potent. Freddie Bell's "Giddy Up a Ding Dong" is very much about likening one's penis to a horse, which seemed on brand here. But even more intense was Jacques Brel's "Next", serving as the title track here. That song used the historical context of how the French army ran mobile brothels to supply prostitutes to the soldiers during the World War campaigns to offer an over-the-top story of how a young man lost his innocence on two different fronts: the sex and the war - "All the naked and the dead/Should hold each other's hands/As they watch me scream at night/In a dream no one understands." Can this album be a bit much in its crass humor? Yes, I can freely admit that. But more often than not, I was intrigued by the showmanship and musical technicality of Alex Harvey and his band to sell these tales of debauchery. Again, I can see how this would be influential.

That just leaves me with a few issues I need to bring up. First, for as much as "The Faith Healer" is the iconic song from this record that many have covered, I just feel like the buildup from the monotone electric piano motif took longer than it needed to. That intro could have been trimmed down by at least thirty seconds, and you wouldn't miss out on much. Second, there were some glaring panning issues on the closing track, "The Last of the Teenage Idols", where it started cutting to the left speaker toward the end of the last chorus, then immediately shifted to the right for the switchup to the doo-wop-esque final movement, before the mix was corrected partway through. I don't know why the track was mixed like that.

Nevertheless, I had a good time with Next as a very cocky record. The Sensational Alex Harvey Band continued to put out music until their disbandment in 1978, and Alex himself would die of heart failure four years later. There had been some reunions by the backing band since, but nothing too concrete. Still, at this point, their legacy had been set in the glam rock and even punk scenes.

First listen. This started off ok and I wasn’t feeling it. The latter half of the album is bonkers good though. I can see where Geordie Greep got his inspiration from.

I listened to pretty much this whole album while on the toilet with diarrhea, and I’m not really sure which one was the better experience

Sensational is a pretty accurate descriptor for this band; this is some of the sleaziest, most over the top, and ridiculous glam rock I've ever heard. Probably not my favourite discovery from the list, but I had a good time and am happy to have heard it.

If you want to call yourself "sensational", please have the decency to be, you know, sensational.

I was expecting some cool, trailblazing glam rock, but honestly, this record is a total mess. I can see the bluesy, hard rock roots that probably influenced bands like AC/DC or Nick Cave, but the songs are just buried under all the exhausting, over-the-top theatrics. It feels way less like a solid rock album and more like a weird, deranged screen test for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The vocals are super grating and drift into this annoying pantomime that makes it hard to take the musicianship seriously.

The whole vibe is ruined by the sleazy, immature writing. Tracks like "Gang Bang" are just repulsive and kill any momentum the album manages to build.

Die Instrumente waren kacke, aber dafür war der Gesang besonders scheiße. Die Lyrics hingegen: Scheiße

First listen. Never been exposed to this band before.

Wow - this is my jam! Absolute belter of an album. Nothing too deep going on, but Swampsnake sets the tone - just flat out rock n roll. Foot stomping goodness mostly, although the dip into doo-wop spoils it a bit.

Straight 4

I'm conflicted with my thoughts on this. On the one hand, there's some killer bluesy riffage, ominous basslines and even a proto-industrial energy contained within it at times, but on the other it's an uncomfortably sleazy experience, surely with theatrical intentions but I still found a lot of the lyricism to be crude nonetheless. Sonically it finds itself in this weird intersection between glam/hard rock and cabaret, and it struggles to settle into any discernible stylistic pattern or groove.

I struggled to get through the complete package as a result, despite liking bits and pieces, but the worst offenders were "Giddy Up A Ding Dong" and particularly the second track "Gang Bang", which has aged like milk.

I'm awarding a very tentative three stars for some of the musicianship.

it somehow keeps getting worse. meatloaf, queen, and a sprinkle of axl rose in the worst way imaginable

I’m at a 4.

I don’t think there’s a bad track here. I just think there’s a very strange execution that never totally fulfills what it’s going for; it’s an album that doesn’t take itself that seriously, so it can get away with playing a bit cheesier, and it usually works to a point. When it gets as over the top as it does, it usually loops back around to being fun for me. This album just can’t decide how non-chalant it wants to be in relation to the actual music at hand. The tone works on tracks like “Gang Bang”, “Giddy Up a Ding Dong” & “Vambo Marble Eye” because you can tell they’re having fun with it. It doesn’t work quite as well on a track like “Swampsnake”; it’s an awkward tonesetter that tries to straddle the line between being taken more seriously & being a bit overdramatic, and I think it’s just an OK opener for it. “The Faith Healer” is interesting, if only because I perceived it as an almost orgasmic take on a cult leader describing God, and that made the uncomfortability of the track work for me, even if it’s a bit long.

“Next” is… fascinating. It’s a Jacques Brel cover, translated to English, so I can literally feel the Broadway-ness of it all in the recording. I think it’s one that’s over the top enough to work, but it straddles the line via subject matter & not necessarily in how it plays out. At base level, the story of traumatically losing your virginity in the army isn’t something you’d really take in that direction, & that conflict between the delivery & the execution feels like the dichotomy that defines the whole album. “The Last of the Teenage Idols” does the same thing, but in a different way; I think it plays itself decently straight to begin with before looping back to a ‘50s style that just sort of awkwardly closes out the whole album. It just doesn’t really work in that order, and it really leaves me wondering what the overall throughline of the album is meant to be other than probably having a lot of sex in good & bad ways.

That said, I still don’t think there’s a bad track here. Just really odd execution that’s fun to listen to in the moment, yet lacks a real sense of cohesion after it’s all said & done, creating an indecisive air about how seriously one should take this album. I think people have taken it a bit too seriously (hence the 2.7 on the site), but I understand why they’d do so, given “Swampsnake” as an opener & a general hesitation to buy into this album throughout. For me, it’s a 4; realistically, closer to a 3.5 bumped up to a 4 after laying all of this out, but still. I think there’s something here that just needed to be tightened up to decide how “Rocky Horror”-esque it wanted to be for the sake of a better flowing album. I don’t know if it HAD to be on the list, but given who this band inspired, I think it’s got a place here.

I thought this album was kind of weird and all over the place. You hear several rolicking blues tunes with crazy guitars and then shift to experimental tracks like "The Faith Healer" (that one was pretty okay), and just weird psychedelic-tinged stuff like "Next". "Gang Bang" was very high energy, but those lyrics were certainly something. There were some catchy moments, but the band just switched between so many different styles that I think it's too strange for me.

Next was just a super fun album. I have never really known much about Alex Harvey or his band but i think this sounded more or less like i was expecting it to sound. Overall, every song was just an insanely fun ride that all sounded so swinging and upbeat. I can admit that The Faith Healer is probably one of the weirder songs on the album but for a weird track, its a really good one. The rest of the songs though had that exact vibe i love in this sort of glam rock. I did initially want to find a reason not to give it a 5 star due to the aforementioned weirdness of The Faith Healer but at the end of the day, this album is just far too fun for me to do so.
Best Song: Gang Bang
Worst Song: The Faith Healer