Fire

Yeah, yeah, yeah – we all know motor city’s burning, but the fumes emanating from the garages of Detroit have also ignited a disco inferno.

Way before rap-metal or Madchester, skinny white boys and girls knew how to put a dance stance through their amps; Afrika Bambaataa and John Lydon hooked up without editorial comment, and The Clash asked Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five to open their New York shows.

Twice on this debut Electric Six quote the proto-punk/MC classic ‘The Magnificent Seven’, and if their bottom end isn’t quite as sphincter-tight as say, Gang Of Four, they’re generating energy from the same source of tension. Here, the clash city rockers meet the champagne set uptown in Studio 54.

So, the implied melody you hear behind ‘Danger! High Voltage’ is Donna Summer’s ‘Hot Stuff’, and the hot ‘n’ sweaty sax break at the end of the tune links The Stooges’ ‘Funhouse’ to early Roxy Music.

That said, singer Dick Valentine is no Ferry-esque lounge lizard. The guy doesn’t even go Dutch. “Now tell me do ya/Do ya have any money?” he dribbles all over the B52s polluted surf riff of ‘Gay Bar’: “I wanna spend all your money/At the gay bar, gay bar, gay bar”. The sub-text of this record might suggest that the best way to get laid is to get a laugh first. On ‘Naked Pictures Of Your Mother’ the singer is assuming the persona of some limo-driving, Gekko-like CIA operative on a kerb-crawl, leering, “I might like you better if we fucked together”. Often as not, the Six evoke the crank visionaries at Don Was’s Ze label in the early ’80s, a stable of avant garde nerds learning how to do ‘La Freak’.

Mind you, over 13 tunes, the post-ironic disco king shapes and “Fire in the disco”/“Nuclear war on the dance floor” metaphors wear a little thin. Rare moments of earnestness (well, almost) such as the retro-futuristic PVC routine ‘I Invented The Night’ offer welcome respite and suggest how the band might expand their armaments over time. But on balance, Fire comes on like the man-sized rooster that learned how to do the funky chicken.