Like papyrus scrolls or the contents of Chinese take-out containers, Electric Six has grown harder to decipher with time.<\/p>\n
It’s kind of a shocker.\u00a0 Their debut, Fire<\/i>, was a musical J\u00e4ger bomb.\u00a0 It was sleazy and sophomoric, but damn, did it go down smooth.\u00a0 You didn’t ponder Fire<\/i>‘s songwriting.\u00a0 You didn’t question its motivations.\u00a0 There was but one, and it was evident in every turgid, throbbing inch.\u00a0 Fire<\/i> was the product of a masculinity so sweatily aggressive that it simply had to be expressed via SONG! and DANCE!\u00a0 It was almost like West Side Story, only with sexy ladies and exothermic reactions filling in for Sharks and Jets.<\/p>\n
With Fire<\/i>, the \u201cLeast Likely to Attain Artistic Complexity\u201d title belonged to Electric Six.\u00a0 It would’ve been perfectly respectable to wear that skewed joker’s cap like a crown, to build a career on high-octane stupidity (The Bloodhound Gang is probably still financing their beer with royalties from \u201cFire Water Burn\u201d).\u00a0 It would’ve been interesting (if ill-advised) to shoot for artistic credibility.\u00a0 Pleading with MTV’s viewing audience to look past your novelty singles occasionally pays off.\u00a0 Dick Valentine & Co. chose to kick it iconoclast-style and pursue both of these options.\u00a0 Simultaneously.\u00a0 Over their next four albums, they retained the deliciously dirty humor and macho posturing.\u00a0 They also got — I don’t know quite how to say this — good<\/i>.
<\/i>Most albums\u2019 problem is what they lack.\u00a0 Flashy<\/i>‘s is what it doesn’t.\u00a0 Valentine mixes and mashes genres and moods with a finesse that would turn most DJs green.\u00a0 The album <\/i>swerves from funk to mariachi to metal, and it does it with style and a sardonic leer.\u00a0 It’s difficult to critique what you can’t pin down, though.\u00a0 Take \u201cWatching Evil Empires Fall Apart.\u201d\u00a0 It’s a vicious dictator’s ballad to his special lady (\u201cBack in the years before blood lost all its flavor \/ You slipped and fell, but you fell into my favor\u201d).\u00a0 It may be the mournful piano chords, it may be Valentine’s skills, it may be sheer serendipity, but damned if the thing doesn’t manage to be poignant and ridiculous at the same time.\u00a0 Therein lies the Flashy<\/i>-dox: is it a joke?\u00a0 Is it legit?\u00a0 What is it, how should I feel about it, and am I gonna feel guilty in the morning if I do?<\/p>\n
Yes, it’s more complicated than previous E6 albums.\u00a0 But Flashy<\/i>‘s still bales of fun.\u00a0 It exceeds the USRDA for dance-punk extravaganzas; your booty is in no danger of remaining immobile.\u00a0 \u201cFormula 409\u201d pairs funk’s fire with metal’s kerosene.\u00a0 The resultant boom is classic E6… slithery guitars, frantically shrieking sax and an escalating barrage of coos and shouts.\u00a0 Scrubbing one’s grout has never felt so deliciously filthy.\u00a0 \u201cDirty Ball\u201d is true to its name.\u00a0 The deep synths and throbbing bass merge into one irresistible, bouncy rhythm; you’re liable to be humming the chorus for weeks (\u201cPut your dirty love in a ball \/ And bounce it off of me!\u201d).<\/p>\n
Other tracks are insidiously catchy.\u00a0 \u201cGay Bar Pt. 2\u201d seems jokey and slight\u2026then it embeds itself in your head like a .22 round.\u00a0 Who knew that mariachi horns and conga drums would complement a grinding hard rock tarantella?\u00a0 For that matter, who would’ve guessed Electric Six would pen a perfect seduction ballad?\u00a0 \u201cYour Heat is Rising\u201d pairs woozy, swoony guitars with majestic crests of piano.\u00a0 It’s pure, undiluted sexy, although the lyrics (\u201cCome lose your ooze upon my knee!\u201d) may have you giggling too hard to seal the deal.\u00a0 And the final cut, \u201cMaking Progress\u201d is the best slice of synthpop this side of 1982.\u00a0 It’s a cheery swirl of electronic chirps and whistles.\u00a0 There are handclaps, drum-smacks and flagrant Vocoder abuse.\u00a0 The result is an airy, euphoric delight.\u00a0 It’d make Marc Almond claw his eyes out with jealousy\u2026 that is, after he finished dancing.<\/p>\n
Flashy<\/i> is quite a bit darker than its sweet nothings, however.\u00a0 Several tracks are more brooding and intense than anything the band’s ever done.\u00a0 \u201cWe Were Witchy Witchy White Wome\u201d is prime E6 with, dare I say it, a hint of maturity — at least as much maturity as a song about lesbian witches can accommodate. If you grafted a pair of big, swingin’ testes onto poppy electronica, or a heart within hair metal’s spandex-encased thoracic cavity, you still wouldn’t quite have it.\u00a0 Its quirky, silly-sweet narrative is echoed in \u201cLovers Beware,\u201d a grim saga of interoffice l’amour.\u00a0 Its jerky proto-emo rock is punctuated by shouted \u201chey!\u201ds, each one reducing our doomed protagonists’ cubicles to rubble.\u00a0 \u201cTransatlantic Flight\u201d is a standout.\u00a0 This tale of a doomed redeye is spooky and atmospheric.\u00a0 The chorus is utter silliness (\u201cIn the event \/ of a water landing \/ You can use my body as a flotation device\u201d).\u00a0 But thanks to the stabbing synths and haunted coos, the mood remains one of escalating dread.<\/p>\n
It’s a pity there’s no Billboard chart for \u201cContemporary Unclassifiable.\u201d\u00a0 Flashy<\/i>‘s neither recognizable enough to peg with a genre nor obscure enough to peg with \u201cgenius.\u201d\u00a0 Its weird, thorny detours may alienate older fans.\u00a0 Its hilariously absurd lyrics may scare off new ones. \u00a0Yeah,\u00a0 it’s severely weird.\u00a0 It’s also damned good, in ways you’d expect and many you wouldn’t.\u00a0 So what, objectively speaking, is wrong with the hard-to-describe?\u00a0 Why try to classify the truly innovative\u2026that which meets no existing classifications?\u00a0 Flashy<\/i> will make you laugh, roll your eyes, scratch your head and shake your thang.\u00a0 Don’t define it — enjoy it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":29688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[8253],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-41287","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\/41287","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=41287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41287"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}