Review Summary: A decent, enjoyable album from Electric Six, a band laced with wit and humour. However, it pales alongside the debut album Fire, which set the precedent that this album was not able to achieve.
I was introduced to Electric Six earlier this year, and I was considerably impressed by the humor and talent the band had, especially in the vocalist Dick Valentine. I played the album I had,
Fire (their debut), quite a few times, and still listen to the few stand-out tracks on it. So when I found out there was a new album by the sextet, I was excited to listen to it, especially when I found out it was titled
I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master. You have to admit, it’s an attractive title and really epitomizes the way I think about Electric Six: original, quirky, and very fun to listen to.
So I got ISEEAMTRMFBTM (ok that was a bad idea, I’ll refer to it as ‘the album’ from now on), and I was actually a little disappointed on my first listen. None of the tracks really stuck out to me, and it just seemed like an uninspired effort that was below the standard
Fire had first made. I was also told by a friend that earlier album, entitled
Switzerland , was not as good as Fire either. So I concluded that I was going to have to give the album a bad score and mainly talk about what was wrong with it. Lucky for me, I gave the album another chance and postponed my review another few days and it really paid off for Electric Six. The album has really grown on me, and although it isn’t as good as
Fire , still is a decent effort and an enjoyable album to listen to.
The first thing to note about the album is that there aren’t any outstanding tracks, like there was on
Fire . While their debut had four songs which immediately stood out as ‘brilliant’, this album didn’t have any that stood out straightaway, and only after a few listens did I decide on two songs that rose above the rest: the songs Lenny Kravitz and Down at McDonnelzz. Lenny Kravitz is a nice rocky little song with a very catchy tune and hilarious lyrics such as ‘I have some money here for you so reach into me and grab it, and I never understood why anyone likes Lenny Kravitz’. Down at McDonnelzz, on the other hand, is a very different song when compared to Lenny Kravitz. Driven by a piano tune, which at first was incredibly annoying but eventually became catchy, the song contains an almost rap-like chorus which just sticks into your head. I was in the middle of my macroeconomics exam, and I had the bloody tune in my head. I don’t even know the words because I wasn’t able to find lyrics for the song, so I was just mumbling the chorus under my breath while I was writing about how the mining boom in Australia isn’t sustainable in terms of net exports. Incredibly catchy.
The same goes with the rest of the album. There were not any particular standouts, but most of the songs were catchy, or had catchy parts to them. This made listening to this album quite enjoyable, and I discovered I do a lot better in Counter-Strike when I have this album playing. Another reason to get the album!
So now I’ve told you what the album does right, I’ll spoil your hopes of this album being brilliant by telling what it does wrong. I’ve already mentioned the biggest flaw: there are not that many huge standouts. This, along with the fact that overall the songs on this are not as good as
Fire really drag this album down. There are funny moments all over, but I really didn’t notice anything simply brilliant in it’s originality like I did on
Fire . For example, Valentine screaming ‘SOLO’ right before the solo on Naked Pictures (Of Your Mother), or on another track when he would yell ‘STOP’ *music stops*, and then ‘CONTINUE’ *music continues*. It really made
Fire enjoyable to listen to, and this album lacks anything really witty and funny like that. To be honest, I’d say half, maybe even more, of the songs are quite boring and do nothing more than earn the right to be called ‘filler’.
Hence, the longevity of this album is probably a lot less than that of Fire. As of writing this review, I’m not really listening to the album as much any more. I’m actually listening to
Fire more because it’s simply a better album. I don’t think anyone would listen to this intensively, because there isn’t enough on it to keep you interested for an extended period of time. However, it is a reasonably decent album, and a worthwhile album if you absolutely loved
Fire , or any of Electric Six’s other albums.
Pros:
- Catchy songs
- An enjoyable album to listen to overall
- The two stand-out songs are really good
Cons:
- Not as many really good songs are
Fire
- Doesn’t have as much longevity as
Fire
- Just not as good as
Fire
- The above point is bad because this album isn’t very different from
Fire .
- If you are interested in the band, purchasing
Fire would be enough for you to listen to the full scope of the band.
(Sorry I’ve mentioned
Fire so much, but I found it would have been impossible for me to really compare this to anything else. I don’t really listen to anything like this).
