Switzerland

For a band with song titles like "Vibrator" and "Danger! High Voltage," it might be easy to overlook the undercurrent of dark humor in many Electric Six songs. It was best articulated in "The Future Is in the Future," the song closing the band's second album, "Senor Smoke." However, "Switzerland," the third Electric Six studio outing, is a parallel-universe exploration of the band's favorite themes. Subjects that served as the focal point of the Six's prior releases ? love and lust, parties, the devil, drugs, warfare ? are treated here with distrust and disdain, rather than casual celebration.

Opening track "The Band in Hell" sets the tone nicely, with singer Dick Valentine apologizing to a lover for forcing her into a relationship with the front man of the damned. Further tracks expose the seedy underbelly of recreational excess. "I Buy the Drugs;" "Infected Girls;" "Pulling the Plug on the Party" and "There's Something Very Wrong with Us, So Let's Go Out Tonight" all find the band lamenting the emptiness of revelry rather than embracing it. Even music itself receives a dig from Valentine and the band, with "I Wish This Song Was Louder" revealing the limitations of music to bring joy and the frustration in Valentine's own songwriting.

"Switzerland" marks Electric Six as a group of songwriters and musicians who are experts at wedding catchy, party-prepped hooks to dark and sinister lyrics. "Mr. Woman" is an excellent example of how apparently simple things have unexpected, unusual twists beneath the surface; it is a perfect analogy for Six's clever writing and performance. However, simply because the album marks a darker outlook does not mean the band has lost hope or humor. As the song, "Night Vision," suggests, one need only adopt a different outlook to cut through the darkness.