Electric Lash

by Hanani

Opening toy instruments and machine gun drum riffs are not normal staples of Church songs that we've come to love, and when the Church revisited "Electric Lash" for El Momento Siguiente, they wisely left that nonsense back in the grooves of the '80s Séance. I just wish they would have dropped the slide, too.

I suppose it's all the dressing of the '80s that mask the muse in this song, because I used to love this song, I really did. It sucked me into the album before I even heard "Fly" and "One Day." Jason and I used to sing this song together and argue about the lyrics, which he knew because he actually had the lyrics on the Carrere import version. unfair. Squeezed between "Disappear?" and "Now I Wonder Why," it all felt…good. There are some clean harmonies and nice pop melodies; of course, there is a nice hook and some vague, dreamy lyrics about love. Those are the very things I still like about the song and I suspect those are the things Steve Kilbey still likes about the song, too, because they've certainly played this song many times since even into the '90s. Their acoustic rendering on El Momento Siguiente suggests they still like the song as well. While the slide guitar solo is a tad lacking in ingenuity, I like how the song builds back into the chorus in that typical manner.

No matter the plastic trees in the studio, I've still no idea or concern what the lyrics are about.

Thanks, Danna, for making a charcoal-on-pink-board copy of the album cover for my 18^th birthday~! One of those great gifts that time does not forget.