I think 'Flashy' would be the sun-dried tomato." When it's all said and done, we're going to be one of those deep dish pizzas where they throw every type of ingredient in there. "I think it's a great piece," Valentine said about "Flashy." "Our catalog's starting to look like a pizza and it's just another topping. tour in support of its fifth album, "Flashy." Like its predecessors, "Flashy" showcases Electric Six's brand of disco-inflected trash rock and includes songs such as "Gay Bar Part 2," "Formula 409" and "Transatlantic Flight." Andrew's Hall will serve as the closing night of the band's U.S.
Throw in the irresistible funky disco of ‘Improper Dancing’ and Fire becomes a quirky but compelling album. ‘Naked Pictures (Of Your Mother)’ and ‘Electric Demons In Love’ stack the album at the top, while ‘Nuclear War (On The Dance Floor)’ serves as an effective mid-record palate cleanser. It remains a good look.īut, unsurprisingly, it’s the more spiteful, spikier songs that have stood the test of time. The slower songs – ‘I’m The Bomb’ and ‘I Invented The Night’ in particular – are a showcase for Electric Six’s smoother side. Set aside the three singles and Fire reveals influences from rock, punk, funk, glam, disco and pretty much anywhere else you can name.
Humour is an important characteristic but not the only one, and the less famous songs are the ones that bring the others to the fore. Its strength across 13 songs earned it a decent critical reception and it’s the best album tracks that sound freshest today. There’s just enough crunch to stand them on their own two feet, still, but otherwise these are songs that haven’t aged especially well.įire was massive in the album stakes as well as through its singles. Listening back, the two big-hitting singles from Fire aren’t just from a different era culturally. If it came out – arf! – in 2019, Piers Morgan would be apoplectic, the daft twat. ‘Gay Bar’ felt brave in 2003, but also frivolous and silly. It’s amazing what you can do with a crotch-light.īut the song that really made Electric Six a household name was a fabulous piece of trolling, a rollicking, raunchy celebration of queer that somehow out-weirded the first single when it came to the video. A chart triumph for the twisted imagination we’ve collectively lost in the 15-plus intervening years. Their first UK single earned Electric Six second spot in the charts, a a career commercial high, at least on these later forsaken shores. The Electric Six phenomenon in the UK began when Valentine and his band of batty bastards pitched up with the bonkers video for ‘Danger! High Voltage’, a sinister alt-disco anthem that caught the scene’s imagination simply because it was a rocky pop song in a style we’d never heard before. Don’t you dare tell me 2003 wasn’t a better time. God bless you for that, Dick Valentine, you barmy sod. (That’s your warning for the video below.)įire was a number seven album in the UK. Where a top-five video featuring a man dressed as a kinky Abraham Lincoln singing about same-sex social establishments was taken for it was. Where being a fascist was broadly frowned upon. A place where the creation of a mass market vegan sausage roll wouldn’t have been front page news. The success of Fire in the UK, a victory for the oddballs, would not happen on this scared, lost, increasingly conservative little island today. The humour at the heart of Electric Six might make a retrospective article about that record a light-hearted affair. What do sarcasm, disco, limitless sexual innuendo and an obsession with nuclear war have in common? Why, it’s the debut album by Electric Six, of course!