Fire (Electric Six album)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fire
Studio album by Electric Six
Released	May 20, 2003
Genre	Indie rock
Length	38:13
Label	XL Recordings
Producer	Damien Mendis and Stuart Bradbury
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Amazon.com (positive) link Dotmusic link The Guardian link The A.V. Club (positive) link Pitchfork Media (4.0/10) link PopMatters (NR) link Rolling Stone link Spendid Magazine (negative) link Village Voice (positive) link Village Voice (Consumer Guide) (A-) link
Electric Six chronology
Fire (2003) Señor Smoke (2005)

Fire is the debut album of Electric Six, released in 2003. It spawned three singles, the first charting ("Danger! High Voltage") in the US, the second getting heavy video play on MTV ("Gay Bar") and the third being "Dance Commander".

The album received generally positive critical reviews.^[1] Rolling Stone called the album a "brilliantly demented party record" and Blender hailed the music as "convincingly ferocious." Detractors of the album such as Splendid called the album "a misfire and a waste of time."

The lyrics of several songs from the album contain tongue-in-cheek references to fascism and militarism, for example the line "Let's start a war" from the Song 'Gay Bar,' and the line "You must obey the dance commander" from 'Dance Commander,' not to mention the song 'Nuclear War (On the Dance Floor).' As the single "Gay Bar" was released around the time of the American invasion of Iraq, radio airplay changed a line from "Let's start a war, start a nuclear war, at the gay bar" to "Let's do an edit, do a radio edit, at the gay bar!". In the UK, the words 'nuclear war' were censored by a 'whip' sound effect.

Fire went gold in the United Kingdom on 5 September 2003.

In May 2008, the track Danger! High Voltage was used in a Subaru Forrester commercial. It depicts several sumo wrestlers approaching a Forrester with the needed requirements for washing a car, and then parodying the cliche of the sexy woman (women) washing the car in slow-motion. Near the end two elderly people watch the proceedings with mouths agape. The tag line is then said over the end of the clip of the song. The tag line for the commercial is "Japanese SUV's just got a little sexier."

[edit] Track listing

1. "Dance Commander" – 2:37
2. "Electric Demons in Love" – 3:06
3. "Naked Pictures (Of Your Mother)" – 2:11
4. "Danger! High Voltage" – 3:34
5. "She's White" – 3:16
6. "I Invented the Night" – 3:17
7. "Improper Dancing" – 3:14
8. "Gay Bar" – 2:20
9. "Nuclear War (On the Dance Floor)" – 1:16
10. "Getting Into the Jam" – 2:14
11. "Vengeance and Fashion" – 2:46
12. "I'm the Bomb" – 4:18
13. "Synthesizer" – 4:00
14. "Don't Be Afraid of the Robot" – 1:40 *
15. "Remote Control (Me)" – 2:21 *
16. "I Lost Control of My Rock & Roll" – 1:47 *

*Bonus tracks of the Japanese edition

[edit] Charts

Chart (2003)	Peak position
U.S. Billboard Top Electronic Albums	5
U.S. Billboard Top Independent Albums	38

[edit] References

1. ^ Electric Six: Fire (2003) Reviews at MetaCritic.com.

'Credited as John s. O'Leary, Jack White provides the "female" backing to the single Danger! High Voltage.' From the September 2007 issue of Q magazine.