At its best, Slaughter fills the same niche today that garage bands filled in the mid-Sixties – a speedy and loud but pretty and danceable combo with psychedelic pretensions and fashionable haircuts, imitative hacks from the git-go but perfect for suburban girls who need to break free of the seventh-grade grind. And shaking loose from that junior-high jungle is what Slaughter harmonizes about: When you get down to it, the band's 1990 MTV smash "Up All Night" was about a really wild slumber party. Pumping up pomp-gone-bubblegum drama with antsy falsetto choruses, traffic-jam honking, grandfather-clock chimes, calls and responses and little kiddies singing "America the Beautiful,"
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"Up All Night" packed as much offhand joy into its four minutes as any guitar-rock single this decade.
The Wild Life has a couple of aural extravaganzas that don't work so well – these guys paid too much attention to Queen's classical orchestration, and when they get heavy and bombastic, they're just klutzy metal clods. But when they keep it short and simple – which is usually – they'll make you stomp your hands and clap your feet. The rhythm section takes Led Zep funk and strips it down so it's all platinum hook – no art. Mark Slaughter sounds sweet even when he's trying to sound nasty.
They do power ballads, too, of course. "Days Gone By" is a real throatlumper. The seven-minute strum epic "Times They Change" actually manages to work in sound bites about domestic violence and the gulf war without being insufferable, and "Old Man" is a friendly hillbilly choogle. But this album's high points are its happy weekend-celebration shout-alongs: "Out for Love" (which drops heartache and cute clatter into its boot dance like classic Slade), "Dance for Me Baby" (imagine the Bay City Rollers with David Lee Roth doing cameo asides), "Shake This Place" (about staying up all night, then all the next day, too!).
The Wild Life has more filler than Def Leppard's new album, but Slaughter's empathy for its audience makes Adrenalize's nonstop hooks seem clinical. The title cut, on which our protagonist and her girlfriends gather to watch the city lights just like they did in "Up All Night," sums up this band's philosophy: "You'll feel like an animal that's been uncaged." A time-proven rock & roll notion: As soon as three o'clock rolls around, you finally lay your burden down. School's out for summer. (RS 633)
CHUCK EDDY
![Slaughter - The Wild Life [audio Cd]](http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000006LWU.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg)
