Fire

by

Electric Six

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."