Flashy

Whilst as a big Electric Six fan I greatly appreciate their prolific output, there are certain drawbacks to it and this album illustrates those more clearly than any of its predecessors. Namely, the problem is quality control. Again this album is laced with more gems from the rock/disco/pop amalgum seam that along with Dick Valentine's bizarre darkly comic lyrics, the band has been mining very successfully since Day 1, but as with previous record "I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master" - once again you have to sort through a fair few less impressive tracks to uncover these highlights.As an artistic statement "Gay Bar - Part II" may be an effective middle finger up at all those people wanting them to merely rehash former glories, but it is in itself a very week song which is brought into sharp relief by the comparison the title so readily invites. Also, it's a bit hypocritical to serve up a deliberate red herring like this mocking the desire some have to see them stay in one particular style whilst serving up the song "We Were Witchy, Witchy White Women" which sounds like it could have been a take-out from the album "Fire".Right with that off my chest, on with the rest of the record. "Formula 409" is a good strong stomper that has a video available on the net and as such I assume (due to lack of promotion) may be the lead off single and deservedly so."Dirty Ball" is only so-so but inoffensvie enough.There then follows the best sequence of tracks on the album starting with "Lovers Beware" moving through the excellent "Your Heat Is Rising" which is one of the album's highest points and concluding with "Face Cuts", which put things right back on track.Sadly both "Heavy Woman" & "Flashy Man" from whence the album draws it's name are both candidates for the file marked "filler"."Wathcing Evil Empires Fall" is good but falls just short of great despite threatening constantly to trip the balance in favour of the latter. It does boast an intriguing lyric though."Graphic Designer" is a classic late-period Electric Six rocker that presses all the right buttons."Transatlantic Flight" is a strong lyric with a slightly plodding accompliament that does grow on you after multiple listens.Closing track "Making Progress" is absolutely superb and to my mind the best thing on the record by some distance. Closer in tone to one of my previous favourite E6 songs "When I Get To The Green Building" this has a similarly hypnotic, fuzzy warm quality and a lyric which intentionally or not is oddly emotionally affecting.All in all there is much to enjoy, but also it has to be said a fair few misfires to dissapoint.

It's safe to say that Electric Six are my favourite band of recent years, and they're way more than the novelty band some fools wrote them off as in the wake of early hits like 'Danger! High Voltage' and 'Gay Bar'. While the clever and highly amusing lyrics have been a constant, their musical style has ranged all over the place, meaning you never know quite what to expect from a new Electric Six album."Flashy", their fifth album as Electric Six, has 13 tracks crammed into a mere 45 minutes - which should tip you off that these are likely to be 13 quickfire little doses of the bizarre, and no ballads. And you'd be right about that.To be honest, I wasn't very impressed with my first listen-through. Unlike the previous albums, it didn't seem to have any leap-out instantly-cool tracks and if I'd been forced at gunpoint to review it right there and then I would've said that it sounded a lot like an album entirely composed of the kind of tracks I was less fond of on their previous albums - the 'okay' tracks that lie between all the other ones that I really like. It was similar to the way I felt about "Switzerland" when I first heard it - except that album had "There's Something Very Wrong With Us", and I knew instantly that I loved that one.But this album is definitely what's called a "grower" - by the third spin you'll know your way around this one, and what initally sounds like a raucous wall of sound will have resolved itself into 13 distinct little gems. Not perfect gems, maybe, but shiny ones nonetheless."Gay Bar Part 2" is, far from being a reprise of their early hit, instead exactly what people who demand bands repeat themselves and continually produce more of the same deserve (!) "Witchy White Women" concerns teenage girls who want to be lesbian witches :-) "Flashy Man" grooves hard and needs to be a single. And bizarre air-crash love-story from beyond the grave "Transatlantic Flight" contains the touching chorus line "In the event of a water landing you can use my body as a flotation device" - truly, greater love hath no man - and any album with lyrics like that cannot possibly be bad :-)Electric Six fans should obviously snap this up instantly - but be prepared to have to break it in a little before it supples up - and anyone else looking to try something clever and different should take a punt, especially at the asking price.

To Be Totally Honest...Back In The Day's Of "Gay Bar", "Danger! High Voltage" & "Dance Commander"...I Totally Fell For Electric 6. Baught "Fire", Loved It, And Thought Awesome...I Like This Band. Fact.Thing is...I THOUGHT That Was It. I Heard Nothing Of Anything After That, So To Discover They'd Released FIVE Albums!!! I Had To Look Into Them Again. "Flashy" Is A Difficult Album, I Won't Beat About The Bush. Where As "Switzerland" ("Mr.Woman", "Pink Flamingos" "Pulling The Plug On The Party") And "Senor Smoke" ("Rock 'N' Roll Evacuation", "Bite Me", "Vibrator") Have Continued Along The Path Of Uber-Catchy, "Flashy" Seems...I Don't Know...Subdued? Matured Some May Say? Yes It Does have It's Moments ("We Were Witchy Witchy White Women", "Watching Evil Empires Fall Apart") But It Won't Hit You With A Groovy Left Hook Like Past Outings. By All Means A Must For E6 Fans...But Not Ideal For First Timers.

Maybe it's because it needs to grow on me a bit more but I don't think this is their best yet. Don't get me wrong it has some fantastic songs on it but it's not consistently fantastic, a bit like the last one, really. Stand out tracks are Formula 409, Dirty Ball, Your Heat is Rising and Face Cuts. The rest are good but not as utterly fantastic as those. The biggest disappointment was Gay Bar Part Two, I was expecting a sequel along the lines of Waynes World and Waynes World 2 but instead it's more like Alien and Aliens.If you like E6 then buy it, you know you must and you won't regret it.