FROM THE VAULTS: A review of Ace Frehley's 2009 comeback album Anomaly.
Back in 2009, Ace Frehley beat his former Kiss bandmates to the punch by about a month with his first solo album in almost 20 years. Here's a review of that album from my old blog.
Back in the early 2000’s, the outlet for my music writing was The Groove Music Life, a now-defunct blog that some Russian hacker farm cocksockets saw fit to ruin, along with thousands of other Wordpress-based blogs, as what turned out to be a warmup for when they proceeded to fuck up the 2016 Presidential Election in favor of the guy Jim Cornette is fond of calling “President Pigshit”. (And that’s all the political ranting I’m going to do here.)
One of the many record reviews I did was for Ace Frehley’s first solo album, Anomaly. It got a very good review compared to the Kiss album that followed it into stores, Sonic Boom. Since that blog is long destroyed, and while I brew up my review of Ace’s new release, 10,000 Volts, I’ve managed to locate the original Microsoft Word file, tweak a few grammatical errors here and there, and present it here on my Substack. Since this review has dropped, Ace has dropped five more solo albums to Kiss’ lone (and final) studio effort, and he subsequently transferred the distribution rights to his current and longtime label eOne for a deluxe reissue. This review covers the album via both the original CD edition and its iTunes bonus track edition counterpart (which the current eOne reissue replicates.) It is safe to say that I take none of what I said back in this article. How 10,000 Volts will compare to it remains to be seen as I write this new introduction the day before the album comes out, but given Ace’s track record for the past fifteen years, I doubt it will disappoint.
ACE FREHLEY
Anomaly
(Bronx Born/RED) (CD/2LP)1
This man was one of many (from the Beatles on through to Marc Bolan, Peter Frampton, and countless others) who threw hints that I should play guitar back in my childhood years. There were a few others that were pushing me in that direction as I reached my teenage years (Rick Nielsen and Pete Townshend come to mind), but Ace Frehley and his smoking guitar (onstage, literally, thanks to his fertile imagination and the breeding ground KISS’s early stage shows provided) planted the bomb. Granted, that bomb was lit the moment Steve Jones walked in with his white Les Paul, plugged it in, and said “Hey kid, check this shit out” before letting off the opening riff to “Holidays In The Sun”2, and that guitar stayed in my hands because of the likes of Johnny Ramone, Greg Ginn, etc., by which time (1982), Ace was already planning to walk away from the band. But Ace was one of the guys that helped increase my interest in playing. And how could you not, given how unmissable and unignorable Kiss was in the late 70s?
Ace’s self-titled 1978 solo album is an underrated, five-star classic that has never gone out of print. His post-KISS output – two albums and a live EP under the Frehley’s Comet moniker and a “second” solo album, Trouble Walkin’ – were welcomed by fans happy to hear from the “Space Ace” but were not as consistent as they should have been. Still, even though he didn’t record anything since 1989, he kept playing, touring regularly to the delight of diehard fans, and being an almost regular presence in Guitar World magazine and its then-sister publication Guitar School. (At one point during this period, Ace rebutted some comments Gene Simmons had inaccurately made to the same magazine about Frehley’s guitar skills in his post-KISS work).
Of course, Ace participated in the reformation of the original KISS lineup, making the band one of the biggest concert draws for the next five years. But the band only did one studio album at that time (Psycho Circus, which only really had Ace on two songs – Tommy Thayer, who has been professionally cosplaying as him ever since, played the rest of the solos). The group then stayed in back catalog land with their set list, something that didn’t completely please Ace. He left KISS for the second time after what was supposed to be their farewell tour, taking a little time off to recharge, explore a few other artistic avenues (including acting), and get sobered up (insert smartass remark incorporating the phrase “being driven to drink” and the name “Gene Simmons” here if so inclined).
When talk of a new Ace Frehley solo album, twenty years after Trouble Walking, came to pass, fans had reason to be skeptical. Ace had been talking about putting out a new solo album for years, especially after walking away from what was rapidly becoming an oldies act (albeit one that puts asses in arena seats rather than state fair bleachers). There was also talk that the album was going to “go back” to the style and attitude of the ’78 album. Thankfully, none of it is talk.
Anomaly is indeed everything it has been promised to be. Much of the album is the same five-star quality rawk and then some that Ace delivered 21 years ago: Out-of-the-box rockers (“Foxy and Free”, first single “Outer Space”), generous helpings of Frehley brand humor (“Pain in the Neck”, “Sister”, iTunes-exclusive track “The Return of Space Bear”3), an Ace-ified cover version (Sweet’s “Fox on the Run”), and a closing instrumental in Frehley’s “Fractured series” (“Fractured Quantum”).
Added to the mix this time around are a couple of introspective tracks and two more instrumentals. On “Too Many Faces”, Frehley appears to address with his lyrics the kind of second thoughts he was having near the end of his second tenure with KISS, while on the acoustic-based “A Little Below the Angels” he references his bouts with alcohol and (for the second time, counting “Rock Soldiers” from Frehley’s Comet) his related DWI and reckless driving incidents. He delivers a bit of lyrical inspiration with “Change the World” and “It’s a Great Life”. The two instrumentals, “Space Bear” and “Genghis Khan”, are two fine excuses for Ace to stretch out his much-lauded guitar skills. His vocal skills, once an admitted weak point, sound much more confident than ever.
Ace didn’t miss a beat with Anomaly. Like the recent return-to-action albums from the Stooges, New York Dolls, and Mission of Burma, it was worth the decades-long wait. Five out of five stars.
#AceFrehley #KISS #OftenImitatedNeverDuplicated #FuckYouTommyThayer #AlbumReview
The current edition of Anomaly was reissued in 2017 by Ace’s current label, eOne in both CD, 2LP and digital formats.
I cite that track as the example because it was, after all, the opening number on Never Mind The Bollocks.
The current edition of the album includes “The Return Of The Space Bear” and an alternate version of “Pain In The Neck” as well as a previously unreleased track.