Electric Six - Fire
by Dan Grote

Electric Six - Fire
Label: XL Recordings
Buzz or Hype?: Buzz
Rating:

Disco and metal: Two acquired tastes that taste great together? This is the question the Electric Six seeks to answer on their major label debut, Fire. With sexy results.

Fire is an incredible (or incredulous) album of dubiously unironic dancehall anthems and sexual overtures that lays the cheesy rhythm of disco over hard rock guitars and embellished rock vocals, creating a musical flavor that should have been thought of years ago.

"Let's start a nuclear war," frontman Dick Valentine declares on "Gay Bar," later finishing the thought on "Nuclear War (on the dance floor)." It is this kind of call to rump-shakin' hyperbolic action that propels the album, as Valentine answers to the "Dance Commander," invites someone to a "Gay Bar" and says favorably of one potential love victim "She's White."

Buzz over the band has been building for most of this year on the strength of their single "Danger! High Voltage," featuring their most intense disco beat and guest vocals from Jack White. "Danger!" with its ear-grabbing "fire in the disco, fire in the Taco Bell/Gates of Hell" discourse, is as entertaining musically as it is lyrically, creating a balance that could have been sprinkled more evenly over some of the other songs, such as "Naked Picture (of Your Mother)," but for the most part, the jams are solid in their garage party ambitions. "I'm the Bomb," another rhythm-heavy track, declares "Girl, when I'm f***in' you, it's like nothing else matters." In these moments, Valentine comes across as Jack Black, with his deep cartoon-like bellow.

VERDICT: Some might accuse the album's disco-metal concept of wearing thin fast. These are the same people who don't "get" Andrew W.K. and only own Back in Black. Granted, it's hard to say how a second LP of music from guys named Surge Joebot and the Rock-N-Roll Indian would hold up, but for right now the Electric Six are one of the wittiest acts out there.

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