Electric Six, KILL

By Christian Lipski

“You can’t run away from your legs, because that’s what you’re trying to run away from them with!”
—unknown SubGenius

In “Waste Of Time And Money,” the second track on the new Electric Six album KILL, Dick Valentine sings: Take this back to where we started. It’s not possible to avoid your origins forever; eventually you’re going to have to accept that your beginnings are part of what makes you unique, and embrace them. Or in Electric Six’s case, you just plug them in and dance along with them.

A phoenix for your ears.

With their sixth album, KILL, Electric Six have stopped avoiding their past, gleefully re-entering the nuclear disco of their debut album FIRE, albeit with the wisdom of seven years under their belts. Giving themselves permission to sound like their first album allowed Valentine and his crew to go into the studio with nothing off-limits. That doesn’t mean that it made KILL a seven-year rehash of FIRE by any means; it just gave them a more complete pool of ideas from which to draw inspiration.

The fact that both albums’ titles are a single word is not coincidental. Despite proposing several titles for the newest CD, including Sign of the Beefcarver as reported in a Popshifter interview with head Six-man Dick Valentine, the group returned to their initial method of choosing their title from the word that stands out the most in their lyrics. And like FIRE, KILL seems to sum up the attitude of the album: loud and aggressive. In fact, KILL is louder and more aggressive than E6 have been in quite a while. When you hear the familiar synth-dance beat and guitar licks from “Danger! High Voltage!” jump out of the opening track, “Body Shot,” you know you’re in good hands.

This return to origins isn’t just aural; Valentine references their hometown of Detroit in both “Body Shot” and “Egyptian Cowboy.” Naming this record after local restaurant Sign of the Beefcarver wouldn’t have been out of place; the songs’ lyrics are the sound of Dick Valentine living, thinking, and working in Detroit. Even “Escape from Ohio” namechecks Michigan and sounds like a direct page from Dick’s tour diary.

When KILL hits, it really hits. “Body Shot,” “Escape from Ohio,” and “The Newark Airport Boogie” are some of Electric Six’s best tunes and capture what is best about the band: they are energetic, catchy, and fun.

KILL is also one of Electric Six’s most diverse and enjoyable albums. One of the band’s strengths is the amazing variety they put into their songs, and this album is crammed with adventurous tunes. There are the tracks instantly recognizable as “classic” E6, such as “Simulated Love” and “Body Shot,” but then there is the loping organ-based “My Idea Of Fun,” which recalls Detroit-born Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger.” The punk rock “You’re Bored” clocks in at a tidy but angry 1:45, and “Steal Your Bones” is a tender ode to cloning that is nearly flawless in its catchy pop styling, with a hummable chorus that stands out from the rest of the song.

And although the vocoder (one of my favorite elements on last year’s Flashy) doesn’t return, Valentine breaks out the Auto-Tune on the brilliantly-named “The Newark Airport Boogie,” which starts off like an 8-bit Euro-dance number, and then explodes into the poppiest and most irresistible singalong chorus, making the song my top pick from KILL.

Photo Credit: Electric Six’s camera on auto

The Six’s other appeal, of course, is their sense of humor, which tends towards the sarcastic. “Egyptian Cowboy” has Valentine claiming that: These songs don’t write themselves/I got a music workshop run by elves/Making dozens of records by the twelves/Stocking our product on IKEA shelves. He also informs us of the non-existence of electric tubas, and that his songs are tasty pies filled with lies. Although funny, these are definitely not joke songs.

While “Escape from Ohio” may seem silly on the surface, observing that Except for GBV and Devo/Nothing seems to redeem Ohio, and there’s also a reference to “Gay Bar” in the lines I still got something to put in ya/But we’ll have to go to West Virginia. Valentine takes jabs at Ohio Republicans John Boehner and Jean Schmidt and notes that, They roll out Joe the Plumber/Just to make sure that our minds get properly fried.

The weak spots, especially “Rubbin’ Me The Wrong Way,” are the result of song structures that become too complicated. Like Axl Rose, Valentine can become too interested in including all of the lyrics he has written, at the expense of the simplicity of the song. If the you the listener doesn’t have a good idea of where you are in the song because it’s got too many distinct sections, you’re not as likely to enjoy it, and that’s the case here.

KILL is a worthy successor to Flashy and I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me from Being the Master, and in my opinion edges past them in quality. It might take a few spins to be able to absorb all the twists and turns of KILL, but you’ll be dancing your ass off from the first notes.

Seven years later, a new creation rises from the ashes of FIRE.

KILL hits shelves on October 20. In the meantime, Electric Six have embarked on their “I’m Trying To Cut a F*cking Spot, Tony!” tour which arrives at the BrilloBox in Pittsburgh, PA on October 14. For more on the band, check out their Official Site or their MySpace page.

RELATED LINKS:

Nothing Wrong With Liking A Flashy Man: An Interview With Dick Valentine, Popshifter January/February 2009 issue

Review of Electric Six, Flashy, Popshifter November/December 2008 issue

If Money Talks Then He’s A Mime, Popshifter May/June 2007 issue