Happy Happy People In Ridiculous Clothes

Evil Cowards “Soldiers of Satan”

Dick Valentine’s music is very often concerned with the notion of evil its most banal and ridiculous manifestations — stupidity, laziness, tastelessness, apathy, pointless greed and corruption. The frustration at the heart of so many of the songs comes from this feeling that we’re powerless against the overwhelming force of all this minor malevolence, and it’s somehow easier to stand against the transcendent horrors of the world than all of its pettiness and venality.

Evil Cowards, Valentine’s new project with Fall On Your Sword’s William Bates, is mostly focused on this theme, and how all these little sins chip away at everything that matters in one way or another. The songs still sound like Electric Six — how could anything written and sung by Dick Valentine not sound like Dick Valentine? — but the arrangements push further than what is normally found on those records, going further into electronic pop territory than usual, and allowing for an orchestral bombast ideally suited to his manly pipes. “Soldiers of Satan” falls into the former category, revisiting the groovy synth pop style of E6 gems such as “Fabulous People” and “Infected Girls,” but with a greater sense of heroic drama in the melody and the vocal delivery. Valentine’s lyrics may come across as the sentiment of a defeated man, but he still manages to convey a defiance, courage, goodness and maturity entirely at odds with the name with the name Evil Cowards.

Buy it from Metropolis Records.