Electric Six - Fire (2003)

1) Dance Commander; 2) Electric Demons in Love; 3) Naked Pictures (Of Your Mother); 4) Danger! High Voltage; 5) She’s White; 6) I Invented the Night; 7) Improper Dancing; 8) Gay Bar; 9) Nuclear War (On the Dance Floor); 10) Getting into the Jam; 11) Vengeance and Fashion; 12) I’m the Bomb; 13) Synthesizer

Exuberant, infectious, dumb fun. Easy to underestimate - there's more here than initially meets the eye.

Key tracks: "Dance Commander", "I'm the Bomb", "Synthesizer"

Fire, Electric Six’s debut, isn’t one for subtleties. It’s very openly here to entertain you and to burn the disco down, figuratively or literally. The song trio that turned the album into a hit - “Danger! High Voltage”, “Gay Bar” and “Dance Commander” - are so ludicrous and screw-loose it’s hard to believe they actually existed beyond a Youtube meme somewhere (or time-appropriately, a Flash video on Newgrounds or alike). A music fan’s immediate approach would be to dig in to find some hidden meaning or nuance but there’s none here. This is plain and simple dumb fun.

It’s a little unfortunate that this was Electric Six’s only real hit with the general public because all those intricacies would follow later. Over the years Electric Six have blossomed into a dangerously smart and ludicrously fun band loaded with charisma and wit. During their debut however, all that was still under development. The core of the sound is intact but the quirks aren’t there yet, and likewise frontman Dick Valentine’s lyrics here rely rather exclusively on the power of their ludicrous topics (see the track titles, which state exactly what the songs are about) and crass punchlines (“I might like you better if we fucked together”, etc). One-dimensional is an ugly word but it’s pretty apt here: what you see is what you get, and what you get is effectively Andrew WK’s I Get Wet going to the disco.

On the flipside, even though they’d become an objectively better band later down the line Electric Six are hardly devoid of merit here. It takes talent to write a genuinely memorable hook, let alone so many the songs practically drown in them, and there’s skill involved in crafting genuinely enjoyable dumb fun that’s more than just a moment’s novelty. Fire has a single-minded focus on both and doesn’t beat around the bush with it: at under 40 minutes it’s one of E6’s shortest albums and also one of their most consistent. Most E6 albums stray from the path a few times down the tracklist but Fire keeps the quality control up throughout. Even the more obvious filler like “Getting into the Jam” or “Nuclear War (On the Dance Floor)” have the capability to be genuinely entertaining simply because of the sheer energy and fury they have, and given they’re over in a minute or two anyway they don’t even overstay their welcome.

When that energy and the overall tight interplay between the band is combined with better writing, it gets real good. It’s all ridiculously over the top but everyone knows what they’re doing and what to focus on, so it all becomes very irresistible: you can’t help but smile to something as fun as “Naked Pictures” or “Improper Dancing”. Sometimes the band even reveal how surprisingly melodic they can get underneath all the macho riffs, leading to tracks like “Electric Demons in Love” and “I’m the Bomb” to become some of the best things on offer. A special shout-out goes to Valentine himself, who was born to front a band like this: he’s the perfect showman for music like this and a great deal why it works far better than it probably should. That said, for all the talk about Fire’s single-mindedness, its arguable highlight is its closer “Synthesizer”. It’s the sole occasion on the album that calms down and gets serious (relatively, given the context). It’s enchanting, suave and downright atmospheric, with the titular instrument laying a cool shine all over the hypnotic rhythm that reimagines the band’s dance rock as something far more exquisite. As the finale for the album you can approach it from many angles: you can think of it as the comedown of the party, as the full stop to end any hypothesised argument raised against anyone who would say Electric Six are just a novelty group without a real vision, or as an alluring glimpse to the future and the band’s development. Either way, it’s the perfect conclusion to the album.

The subsequent albums would offer more of where “Synthesizer” came from and are definitely better in that regard, but when simple pleasures are pulled off this efficiently and consistently it’s not hard to love the result. Fire is by far Electric Six’s most fun album, and that alone counts for a lot.

Rating: 8/10