Tommy Snöberg Söderberg 
After the two previous hard rock albums, it was now time to take the next step with Trash.
It’s an album of an extremely high quality production-wise, and that’s hardly surprising when Desmond Child is the one pulling the strings. He’s also involved in the composition of every track together with Alice.
There is a hit quality to it, there’s no getting around that, and the album is pretty much consistently good!
I think there’s a ‘70s feel to it, even though it doesn’t necessarily remind me specifically of Alice’s ‘70soutput. I don’t really know what to compare it to, but perhaps a more modern take on the productions of Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman. These aren’t lyrics that particularly remind me of the violence of the last two albums, but rather more relationship-oriented material.
The album generated four singles, with Poison becoming the highest-charting one since 1977 (the ballad You and Me). Bed of Nails, House of Fire, and Only My Heart Talkin’ were also released as singles and did reasonably well on the charts. I also really liked Spark in the Dark, although I didn’t quite realize it until I heard the version that appears on the bootleg Waiting Till the Edge Kiss My Neck.
There are quite a few well-known names to be found here, both among the co-writers and the performers. For example, there’s Joan Jett, Jon Bon Jovi, Ritchie Sambora, Kane Roberts, and Steven Tyler.
The latter sings a duet with Alice on the aforementioned Only my Heart Talkin’, and I heard in an interview at the time that Alice was really impressed by Steven’s vocal abilities.
He said something along the lines of that he (Alice) sang as high as he possibly could and Steven was an octave higher… Now, Alice isn’t exactly known for being a particularly acrobatic singer, but it’s still a somewhat amusing comment!
Anyway, the rating will be high, not only because the album came out at exactly the right time, but also because it actually holds up even today. It is, as I mentioned at the beginning, a well-produced album that had no trouble whatsoever getting radio play, which perhaps wasn’t the case with the previous two albums, and the album that definitely put Alice back on the map as an interesting artist!
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Del Gibson