There’s a five-second section of “Improper Dancing” that says it all\u2026 that encapsulates everything that’s come before and everything that follows.\u00a0 It’s the grain of sand at the center of the delicious, slippery little oyster that is Fire<\/i>.<\/p>\n
The song’s escalated (or degenerated) into a total dance-punk frenzy.\u00a0 It’s a whirlwind of pleather and propulsion.\u00a0 The imaginary dance floor in your mind has gone berserk.\u00a0 Suddenly, someone seizes the mic.<\/p>\n
“STOP<\/i>!”<\/p>\n
Everyone catches their breath and stares at the stage.<\/p>\n
Who’s this guy?\u00a0 Why’d the band just slam on the brakes?\u00a0 And what’s with that accent (think “BBC anchor has a few too many stouts and stages a karaoke tribute to Ronnie James Dio”)?<\/p>\n
He’s Dick Valentine… dance commander, electric demon, master of ceremonies.\u00a0 He has descended from the Pantheon of Awesome to bless mortal men with rock (as well as relieve mortal women of their panties).\u00a0 The crowd is silent for one second… two seconds…<\/p>\n
“CONTINUE<\/i>!”<\/p>\n
… and then it explodes.\u00a0 At least that’s how you imagine it.\u00a0 In reality, you’re shimmying around the kitchen in your socks, singing into a can of Pringles and grinning like an idiot.<\/p>\n
It is a glorious idiocy indeed which fuels Fire<\/i>.\u00a0 With some things, less is more.\u00a0 With other things (garlic, dirty jokes, lyrics like “yeah I invented the night \/ in my laboratory using lust and lies”), more is more.\u00a0 More than that is even better.\u00a0 And obscenely huge amounts become transcendental.\u00a0 Many people’s first reaction to the album is incredulity: “Is… is this a joke?”\u00a0 Tough question.\u00a0 The album was conceived as one big, ironic smirk.\u00a0 However, Fire’s dumbness is profound and protracted enough that it eventually morphs into a strange sort of brilliance.<\/p>\n
The album doesn’t have a “theme,” per se, unless you count fire, dancing, girls and various combinations thereof.\u00a0 Each track is the equivalent of a fast food chain’s “stunt” burger… hot, cheesy and loaded with guilty pleasures.\u00a0 There are disco falsettos and metal growls, synthesizers and shrieks, stupid lyrics and… well, really stupid lyrics.\u00a0 You wouldn’t think thirteen of them in a row would work… then again, who would’ve thought the Baconator would be a hit?\u00a0 To adequately explain Fire<\/i>‘s allure, I’ll have to paraphrase Pauline Kael:\u00a0 songs are so rarely “Born To Run” that if we cannot appreciate “I’m The Bomb” (“I’m a man with conversation skills \/ and I’m a man with hundred dollar bills?”), we have very little reason to listen.<\/p>\n
… except, of course, for the catchiness.\u00a0 It takes talent to pen songs that burrow into the listener like liver flukes.\u00a0 It’s not exactly the same talent behind “Fugue In D Minor”, but it’s worthy of respect nonetheless.\u00a0 Dance-punk is a hybrid of two already-catchy genres; the results, if done well, are more addictive than freebasing Twinkies.\u00a0 It’s a bit like an inverted version of glam rock.\u00a0 Style trumps substance, infectiousness beats innovation and iridescent eyeshadow is replaced by hyperinflated machismo.\u00a0 “Danger! High Voltage” (a massive club hit in Europe) is part Bee Gees, part buzz saw and guaranteed to lodge itself in your brain for weeks.\u00a0 It’s what would’ve happened if Studio 54 had been flooded with laughing gas instead of buried in blow. <\/i><\/p>\n
Fire<\/i>‘s flaws are entirely subjective.\u00a0 Enjoying it requires cutting it some serious critical slack.\u00a0 You could criticize it for being vapid, ridiculous, far too self-amused… and you’d be totally correct.\u00a0 You could fault it for repetitiveness, and you’d once again have a valid complaint.\u00a0 It’s not that the songs sound similar — the lyrics may be idiotic, but the musicians aren’t; they wrest an admirable level of variety from four chords and a Casiotone.\u00a0 It’s that the pitch doesn’t waver from track to track.\u00a0 Each song as as LOUD! and LUDICROUS! and INTENSE! as POSSIBLE!\u00a0 The metal-edged macho of “Nuclear War” would be more memorable if it didn’t occur immediately after the surf-funk assault of “ This is an album for which criticism is irrelevant, however.\u00a0 To quote the Great Emancipator, “for those who like that sort of thing, I should think it is just about the sort of thing they would like.”\u00a0 There are those who will dismiss Fire <\/i>as a novelty as ephemeral and unsatisfying as Dippin’ Dots.\u00a0 There are also those who will listen to the first thirty seconds of “Dance Commander” (“it would be awesome \/ if we could dance \/ it would be awesome \/ let’s take a chance”), lunge for the nearest Pringles can and commence busting a move.\u00a0 I happen to be in the latter camp.\u00a0 Fire <\/i>isn’t marriage material, but it’s an excellent bad boyfriend… even though you know better, it’s fun and sleazy enough that you’ll always return its calls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":29471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8253],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-41049","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-electric-six","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41049"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}