Earlier this year, a truck containing mutagen collided head-on with a truck containing funky ’70s grooves. Six mild-mannered rockers on the way to a show were caught in the wreckage. The resulting mutants that stepped away from this accident formed Electric Six.
This Detroit-based group of musicians is almost the definition of finding your own voice. They are completely unafraid to rock, mix, rip off and distort. They also have Jack White of the White Stripes singing female vocals on “High Voltage.”
Bringing together heavy metal stylings and danceable rhythms, Electric Six’s album Fire, released last May, is what rock ‘n’ roll is supposed to be — a raw, powerful rhythm that gets people off their feet.
Six is definitely a larger-than-average number of people to be up on stage at a rock show; however, each and every member of this band puts a heavy dollop of love into the mix. Both guitars provide high-intensity rock chordage, the drum and bass keep the rhythm driving, the keyboards both thicken sound and shatter your aural roof and the singer is certifiably insane, an oft-neglected quality in a front man.
Their live show reinforces the seriousness with which they want to make people rock out. Uniformed in varying professional-rocker attire, from Vegas strip sunglasses to Prince-style ruffled shirts, every single member asks the question, “We are rocking hard, why aren’t you?”
Dick Valentine, lead singer extraordinaire, cannot take the stage away from the assembled freaks behind him, but he is the Dance Commander. He uses instrumental breaks to do awful-yet-sincere dance moves or just stare at the audience, smiling.
Because their lyrics can have an almost Tenacious D-like quality, juxtaposing the mundane and the demonic as in “Fire in the Disco / Fire in the Taco Bell / Fire in the Disco / Fire in the Gates of Hell,” it is as easy to laugh at some of these songs as it is to dance to them.
They also make use of the Ween comedy strategy, as in “Nuclear War on the dance floor,” and “you can go to the doctor / you can cough in his face / infect the whole human race.”
“Gay Bar” is the obvious runaway hit on the album, with popularity drawing from equal parts video production, awesome surf-rock riff and shock value. The video for “Gay Bar” has become a minor Internet phenom, having already had several widely distributed flash animations created in place of the actual video. The actual video is far more amusing than any of the spin-offs, choosing to sing the song through the mouths of people dressed as Abe Lincoln in hot pants.
The other songs on the album obviously deserve many a listen. My major criticism of the album is that my personal favorites are the songs that sandwich everything else, thus making it sometimes difficult to listen to the intermediate portion.
The first song, “Dance Commander,” is an uncompromising expression of the need to party/dance. The last song, “Synthesizer,” is a balladesque track that stirs images of songs off Ween’s The Mollusk and leaves me thoroughly satisfied in every frequency range.
It may be overstatement to say that Fire is the greatest album of the year, or that it may be a primer of the human condition at the beginning of the third millennium. It may be overstatement to say that listening to this album will force you physically up against a wall, pinning you with glistening rock energy. Then again, maybe it’s not.
Grade: A/B