Album Review: Flashy by Electric Six

Electric Six's fifth album kicks off with the brassy, Latin-tinged "Gay Bar Part Two," which has absolutely nothing to do with the original "Gay Bar" but everything to do with Dick Valentine and company's finely honed sense of the ridiculous. Harking back to one of their Fire hits with this songtitle was intended as a shameless marketing ploy, but Flashy feels like a shout-out to the band's first album in other ways: the band dials down the disco-rock of albums like Switzerland and I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me from Being the Master in favor of the gloriously bombastic hard rock-meets-new wave of Fire's album tracks. "Lovers," with its squealing guitar solos and fist-pumping "yeah!" backing vocals, could easily fit into a block of '80s rock programming, and the power ballad "Heavy Woman" boasts a fittingly big bassline and plenty of cowbell.

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Since 2003, the Electric Six have managed to crank out five full-length albums and enough boneheaded rock classics to fill your favorite bar. Yet their 2003 debut disc Fire remains the band’s calling card, featuring four-on-the-floor classics like “Dance Commander”, “Danger! High Voltage”, and, of course, “Gay Bar”. Yet singer Dick Valentine is no doubt sick of those three songs still being his most well-known, which is understandable given how each successive, wildly uneven E6 disc shows his band improving, expanding, and getting better with age (2007’s I Shall Exterminate ...

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