This City Could Have Used A Woman’s Touch

Electric Six “Egyptian Cowboy”

Dick Valentine of the Electric Six is obsessed with deconstructing, satirizing, and critiquing modern masculinity, and so it’s not a big shock that his band’s heaviest album to date pushes its masculine horror to its most absurd extremes. Whereas last year’s Flashy was overflowing with barely concealed insecurities and naked desperation for sexual power, the most harrowing moments on KILL showcase characters whose cynicism and hopelessness run so deep that they’ve entirely surrendered to the idiotic depravity of their base impulses. The riffs have an oppressive weight, and bear down on the grooves like giant feet stamping out the character’s last burning embers of self-respect and decency. Throughout the record, Valentine vacillates between his own smirking self-awareness and inhabiting the role of a clueless beta male in Ed Hardy drag, unconvincingly selling himself as a badass. KILL is their bleakest, most grotesque album yet, but somehow it still comes out feeling fun and funny, thanks in large part to Valentine’s dark wit and total commitment to his premises.

Buy it from Amazon.