“Black Leather Demon” is a cranium-pounding opening that recalls a time when Marilyn Manson wasn’t a bloated joke, but the album really kicks things into gear with the second cut, the title track, a song so sweeping and beautiful that it would be on my playlist for traversing a futuristic wasteland of death and darkness, but with tinges of hope on the periphery.
“Loaded” is more of the same, but with a distinct Joy Division vibe. The melodic, somewhat jauntier “Photograph” will be on repeat for a long time to come as I think about ex-girlfriends and what I did to make them leave me, while “Discipline” inspires me to just knock off the crying and find a woman to whip the sadness out of me. Win-win, I guess.
Electric Living has moved to the top of my “dark moods” playlist — if not albums of the year — giving me all the conceptual brooding I need at 3 a.m. with none of the black velvet or never-ending cups of crap coffee. —Louis Fowler
Hey! Read This:
• Kali Ra interview
This article appears in Jul 10-16, 2013.