Fire (Electric Six album)

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

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

Miscellanea

• According to an interview, lead singer Dick Valentine is the man featured on the cover of the album.^[2]
• The woman featured in the "Danger! High Voltage" video is Tina Kanarek. She is an actress from Toronto in Canada and was 70 at the time of the video shoot.^[3]
• The single "Gay Bar" was released around the time of the American invasion of Iraq, and so for airplay the line "Let's start a war, start a nuclear war, at the gay bar" was changed to "Let's do an edit, do a radio edit, at the gay bar!". In the UK, that words 'nuclear war' were censored by a 'whip' sound effect.
• On some music channels, in the music video for "Gay Bar", when the line "I've got something to put in you" was sung, the objects shown (an egg, a pepper cruet and a banana) were censored.

Charts

References

1. ^ Electric Six: Fire (2003) Reviews at MetaCritic.com.
2. ^ September 2005 Electric Six Interview
3. ^ PopMatters Music Review: Fire by Stephen Haag, May 30, 2003.

'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.