"Partygoing" features 13 quick and catchy songs, and Stephin Merritt and Gonson deliver their lines with vim and vigor, particularly on "How Very Strange" a mean-spirited look back at the implausibility of a relationship, batting lines back and forth-it could be a sequel to the MAGNETIC FIELDS' "Yeah! Oh, Yeah!" (sample lyric: "I put a little heroin / In everything you took in").

Another top track is "Drink Nothing But Champagne," in which Merritt gives his best impressions of David Bowie and Aleister Crowley, as he sings, "Children, drink nothing but champagne / It makes life shorter / Than drinking water" (and water's mostly piss!).

Merritt's ode to double suicide, "Let's Go to Sleep (And Never Come Back)," makes it sound like an adventure, while "Keep Your Children in a Coma" offers these words of wisdom: "You can't let them go to school / For fear of bullying little beasts / And you can't take them to church / For fear of priests." His lyrics veer into territories few have the audacity to touch.

There are fewer zombies and aliens on "Partygoing" than on the prior two albums, though there are plenty of songs about aging, death, heartbreak, rejection and austerity.