Electric Six surf a fun wave

In spite of being busy with his fronting duty, Dick Valentine, in his oversized suit that makes him look even more lost, finds a moment to do some onstage exercises: push-ups, sit-ups, leg-ups… It makes us wonder what is the function of today’s music? Educatainment, protestainment, depresstainment or plain – entertainment? Smart, pish-taking, dumb? It ought to be all but it usually is showbiz in the varying degrees of tormented degradation… And yet, when it hits the quality boulevard – you can hardly get better than Electric Six.

They are manic, wacky, engaging but you’ve expected it to be rockingly feelgood night: general mosh is order of the stalls, even to the songs from the new album, ‘Fire’, that’s been delayed until the end of June (to coincide with the El-6’s return for a Glasto Festi spot). And tonight the band certainly throws it back into critics’ faces for temerity to predict ‘one-hit wonder’ status; ‘Gay Bar’ is as catchy, if less inventive, as the breakthrough hit…

Let’s step back to the beginning of the year: January is a dull month as far as releases are concerned – after all the madness of pre-Christmas – that record companies strangely avoid to launch new acts. Are they afraid of attention-fatigue? That’s been long exhausted by all the ‘TV Reality’ overkill – I’m a viewer, get me outta here!) So, when Electric Six’s single appeared it was like a whiff of oxygen on a London street, like a New York City winter’s day observed from a warm hotel room, discoid oasis in an arid country.

Electric Six, the Detroit funky-punkers, brought summertime to the snowing city: the vital sound of ‘Danger! High Voltage” combined, like nothing else before, rock-funky beat with disco licks and saxophone solos, underlining Valentine’s ranting vocal, plus an uncredited Jack White from the White Stripes screeching about starting fires. (No, he wasn’t there last night!) When ‘Danger!’ starts it is simply that magic moment when everything feels perfect with the universe… And, any song that couples Taco Bell with hell is right on the cosmic pulse!

The band cooks forcefully throughout the set, moving from intense-rocking into more poppy, then funkier moments, a rejuvenating transfusion of E back into entertainment, kicking the fuss about fun that is hardly embraced by the rest of rock-fraternity. Damn it, there is more fun in R&B and corpo Hip-hop than in pop and rock currently! Why is depress cool to de-stress?

El-6 encore with Queen’s ‘Radio Ga Ga’ and it makes complete sense: that’s what we get all the time, from TV, radio, musicians, politicians, PRs, actors, everyone… Electric Six are simply an electrifying antithesis to it all!