Review Summary: Crack A Smile...And More! shows definite signs of improvement, but an equal amount of work still needs to be done.
The year was 1994, and Poison were trying to get their career back on track. After the departure of the magnetically charismatic C. C. DeVille, the group had undergone a failed experiment with soon-to-be second Mr. Big guitarist Richie Kotzen, and were now looking for the next axe-wielder that could help them broaden their horizons. The eventually chosen applicant was “Blues” Saraceno, whose guitar sound and influences met with Bret Michaels, Rikki Rockett and Bobby Dall’s musical vision for the “new” Poison. The renewed four-piece then began work on what would be their fifth album,
Crack A Smile. Life seemed, once again, to be rosy for the group; unfortunately, however, it wasn’t to be. A motorcycle accident landed Bret Michaels in hospital and forced the group to cut production of the new album short, with the whole thing eventually being shelved and Poison disbanidng. However, again, this situation was not to last.
Cut to the early 2000’s, a time when countless glam-rock bands were reuniting and enjoying the residual scraps of their past fame. One such band was Poison, who had gotten back together with C.C. DeVille and were enjoying a second life on Cyanide Records. Their previous company, however, still held the rights to some of their material, and it was in this context that 2000 saw the Capitol release of that long-shelved album, boosted with a few bonus tracks and re-titled
Crack A Smile…And More!. In a way, this “official” release was destined to counter the innumerable bootleg editions of the album which had flooded the market in the interim years; from another angle, however, one cannot deny the appeal of a few more dollars in the company’s vaults. Either way,
Crack A Smile…And More! neither improves nor dishonors Poison’s overall career, instead serving as a worthy document of a troubled time in the band’s history.
The first noticeable difference of this new album in relation to
Native Tongue is its much more light-hearted approach. As much as the guitar style and country influences hark back to that infamous album, the overall tone is much lighter, with the group often sounding like they’re trying too hard, with the jokey skits and lyrics. The writing style is similarly less serious than on the 1992 album, with Michaels in particular sounding like he has the old wink back in his eye. His three companions, on the other hand, go for the boogie-riffic approach of the last two albums, with the rhythm section more prominent than ever before, and the results are generally satisfying.
All in all, then, some clear improvements are visible in relation to the previous album; however, some of the problems which made that such a frustrating piece of work are still clearly visible on this one, preventing it from reaching the same level as Poison releases of old. First of all, despite the group’s best efforts, a memorable chorus is still something that mostly strays far from here. Unlike
Native Tongue, which had all of one real song, this one has several decent candidates to a possible Best-Of, but even the best tracks here –
Baby Gets Around A Bit, Cover Of The Rolling Stone, No Ring No Gets – are a far cry from hits such as
Fallen Angel or
Talk Dirty To Me, leading to prolonged periods of merely adequate blandness. What’s worse, some of them seem – again – to be trying too hard to reach the level of those old hits, amounting to little more than rewrites.
Cover Of The Rolling Stone is, in spirit and execution, similar to
Your Mama Don’t Dance, while
Sexual Thing is nothing but a vastly inferior carbon copy of the irresistible
Unskinny Bop. Even the best chorus here – the huge
Lay Your Body Down – pilfers from another source, in this case Bon Jovi’s hit radio ballad
Always; if you compare and contrast, the similarities are undeniable.
More worrying still is an audible lack of guitar. Even taking into consideration that this is an unfinished piece of work, production-wise, there is throughout these songs a pronounced shortage in blistering solos, one of the characteristics which originally made Poison such a fun band. And while stomping riffs abound, and should please any fan of mid-90’s rock’n’roll boogies, one cannot help but feel the effect of this less inspired turn by Mr. Saraceno, which only drives this album farther from its predecessors.
In the end, while a valid effort – especially with the inclusion of the C.C.-boosted bonus tracks –
Crack A Smile…And More! still doesn’t do enough to bring Poison up to par with their old selves. And while this might not have represented the group’s sound at the time of release, there are doubts as to whether it would have worked in the jaded post-grunge world of 1995, either. For a band facing internal turmoil and lacking direction, it’s definitely not bad, with the downtuned and more restrained sound showing Poison knew how to modernize themselves; but next to the likes of
Open Up And Say…Aah! it’s too little, too late.
Recommended Tracks
Baby Gets Around A Bit
Cover Of The Rolling Stone
Lay Your Body Down
No Ring, No Gets
