Fire

Release type:What's this?
studio album
First released:
May 20 2003

Overview Edit

Fire is the debut album of Electric Six, released in 2003.

The album received generally positive critical reviews. Rolling Stone called the album "the summer's most brilliantly demented party record" and Blender hailed the music as "convincingly ferocious". Detractors of the album included Mike Baker of Splendid, who called the band "[a] novelty act, a misfire and a waste of time" and the reviewer for Uncut, who said that the album contains "little charm and less real humour".

Three singles were released from the album: "Danger! High Voltage", which reached #10 in the U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales chart and #2 in the UK Singles Chart; "Gay Bar", which reached #5 in the UK Singles Chart; and "Dance Commander", which reached #40 in the UK Singles Chart.

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", the line "You must obey the dance commander" from "Dance Commander", and the song "Nuclear War (On the Dance Floor)". As the single "Gay Bar" was released around the time of the American invasion of Iraq, radio airplay changed a line from "Let's start a war, start a nuclear war, at the gay bar" to "Let's do an edit, do a radio edit, at the gay bar!". In the UK and in the official music video for the song, the words nuclear and war were censored by a 'whip' sound effect. "Gay Bar" has also been used in the art film Allah ho Gaybar by artist Sooreh Hera. The film has been taken down from YouTube and stopped from showing in the Netherlands. During a showing in Sweden, the film also provoked attacks by Muslims against artist Lars Vilks during a lecture.

Fire went gold in the United Kingdom on September 5, 2003. Later that year, the album was re-released with a bonus DVD containing the music videos for all three single from the album.

In May 2008, the track "Danger! High Voltage" was used in a Canadian Subaru Forrester commercial. It depicts several sumo wrestlers approaching a Forrester with the needed requirements for washing a car, and then parodying the cliché of the sexy woman (women) washing the car in slow-motion. Near the end two elderly people watch the proceedings with mouths agape. The tag line is then said over the end of the clip of the song. The tag line for the commercial is "Japanese SUVs just got a little sexier."

The Overview appearing in this section is attributed to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_(Electric_Six_album). Portions of this Overview may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.

This particular version Edit

Record label:
Catalog number:
SRCP 363
Release dates:
  • May 20 2003 in United States

Genres

Comedy, Dance. Vote on Genres

What do Amazon.com customers think?

5 stars You must obey the dance commader...
Every song on this album has a reference to fire and dancing, yet there is an unfathomable genius to Fire. The first track, "Dance Commander" makes you wanna do just that: Dance like a f*cking madman and play the air guitar. The rest of the album lives up to the kickass beginning. From the hard-rockin' songs (She's White, Naked Pictures) to the disco rock songs (Electric Demons In Love, I'm The Bomb, Danger! High Voltage) to the 80s synthesizer-driven beauty (Synthesizer) these guys rock every g…
Written by B. Miller "Brandon Miller"
3 stars Not bad, but not great.
I saw these guys perform at Coachella, and their live show flat-out rocks. I was so impressed I bought the album as soon as I got home. The record is creative at first, but wears thin pretty quickly. Eventually the lead singer's constant flip flop between an over-the-top Robert Plant imitation and a weird falsetto gets annoying, and the songs all bleed into one sound.

A couple stand outs (Danger! High Voltage! and Gay Bar) are catchy, but not enough to support the album.
Written by Andrew J Sexton

Track listing Edit

Credits Edit

Surely someone is credited on this release! Add a credit?

Other versions Edit

Fire 13 tracks format: 1 x CD
record label: XL Recordings
catalog number: XLCD 169
release dates: May 20 2003
view details
Fire 16 tracks format: 1 x CD
release dates: Jun 18 2003 in Japan
view details
Fire 13 tracks format: 1 x vinyl
record label: XL Recordings
release dates: May 20 2003
view details
Tell us about another version?

Trivia Edit

  • We don't know any trivia about this release. Add some?

Websites Edit

SoundUnwound is not responsible for the content of external websites.