She's Electric!

After a chest-throbbing show at The Academy this time last year, Electric Six return to the same venue this month to promote their new album Zodiac. With this tour, fans can expect something different to last years KILL, although it’s still classic E6; “We play new songs off the new album, old songs off the old albums,” says singer Dick Valentine. “It’s a treadmill; it’s a lovely, fun-loving treadmill. I’m all set and ready to go.”

The closest they have come to a concept album, Zodiac might seem quite heavy going for the band, but as Valentine explains, “We had a song called ‘Typical Sagittarius’. We knew we were going to end up having that song on the record. It’s kind of funny; the record's called Zodiac but it really has nothing to do with the zodiac at all. We don’t say we’re this type of band or that type of band. We aren’t afraid to have afflicting styles or just sounds on a record, or across multiple record. We could have twelve to fourteen at any time and don’t worry about it. We really don’t over-think anything we do. Sometimes that’s our great shame; our great shame and detriment.”

As a result of this mismatch of sounds and influence (they’ve cited the polar-opposites of Neil Diamond and The Doors), it’s pretty amazing that such a great collection of tunes could be constructed when it’s less than a year since touring their last album.

“I’m always writing songs, especially when I have a couple of weeks off,” Dick says. “The guys in my band are always laying down tracks so ideas can come round at any minute. There’s no one way to write a song; sometimes it starts with a riff, sometimes it starts from a title, sometimes it’s just a lyric. Things kind of come together and you don’t stand in their way.”

Zodiac also contains a cover that the band have considering doing for a while, The Spinners’ ‘The Rubberband Man’, which according to Valentine was a pick-me-up for the album; “We were looking at what we had for Zodiac, songs like ‘Doom and Gloom’ and ‘Love Song for Myself’ and we noticed that the album wasn’t really that fun or ‘happy’ at that time, so ‘The Rubberband Man' makes it a more fun album.”

Although Electric Six's high water chart mark was in 2003, they have maintained a strong militia of fans, regardless of no longer being on a major label. With the prospect of their eighth album being called Man Vs. Internet, Valentine agrees that bands now have a whole new medium.

“It’s great for a band like us actually,” he says, “because the idea that you have to be on a major label or have something like that in your career in that way; it’s pretty much over I mean. It’s better to be, nowadays, like a DIY band. I think even when we started seven or eight years ago when you had to get signed to a label…Now nobody cares about that anymore. People just produce cool music themselves.”

On that subject, there is a Facebook campaign to get ‘Gay Bar’ to the Christmas number one slot this year.
“Yeah we have heard of that,” Dick confirms. “If that works that’d be great, you know, but I definitely haven’t been following it so I’m not counting on anything. But if it did happen it would be a pleasant surprise.”

Electric Six play The Academy on December 4 as part of their current ‘Rent is Too High’ tour. Their new album Zodiac is out now on Metropolis Records..

You can support the ‘Gay Bar for Chirstmas No.1’ movement at [link]http://www.facebook.com/GayBar2010[/link].