The Lovely Electric

The Lovely Electric are Ariane Sherine and Graham Nunn, best friends for many years and now electro-pop/comedy songwriters. You may have come across them a few years back when they ran the globe trotting Atheist Bus Campaign. Ariane Sherine also writes for The Guardian and New Humanist plus has numerous other writing credits to her name.

The title of this album succinctly sums up what this album is all about. It’s at times sordid, foul, vile, puerile and, to some, it may even be offensive. But it is also articulate, imaginative and, crucially for a comedy album, very funny.

Many of the song titles tee-up the listener for the content: Put It In, Don’t Have Sex With a Goat and Thank You For Not Smelling of Fish shouldn’t tax the imagination very much. On the other hand, Hair, Would You Still Love Me?, and Generosity aren’t quite so straightforward. Hitler Moustache is the hilarious tale of a waxing gone wrong, though it wouldn’t be immediately obvious, if you catch the drift!

Overall the material, while smart, isn’t that subtle, this isn’t light-hearted Carry On smut and innuendo, its R18 category and in your face. But within the depravity there’s some biting comments and Ms Sherine has a knack for barbed couplets. Take the aforementioned Generosity ‘You bought me a gift voucher. I said, “Thank you, honey”/But When I went to spend it, the gift card had no money’. There are gems like that all over the album, as well as stories about non performance, towels and, frankly, unavoidable facial contortions, the latter is one of the best songs on the album.

As for the accompanying music, it could be considered incidental as for the most part it’s thin, inoffensive electro/pop. It is totally at odds with the hardcore contents, but it complements Ariane Sherine’s dry vocal, and gives the album an air of playfulness that softens the lyrics a little bit.

Only the writers can tell us if they purposely set out to shock, confront (and there are a fair few did-she-really-say-that sort of lines), or simply entertain but that’s neither here nor there. It just boils down to the fact that if you enjoy clever, knuckle-shredding, ribald humour, you’ll wallow in this.