CD Reviews

Electric Six

I Shall Exterminate Everything around Me that Restricts Me from Being the Master | Metropolis

By MATT ASHARE | November 6, 2007

3.0 Stars

ITunes has Detroit’s Electric Six filed under “blues,” and the acoustic-guitar riff that kicks off the band’s new disc is bloozy in a LedZep/White Stripes sorta way. But E6 are more inspired by a devious drive to reach that potent point where the incendiary grandiosity of glam metal intersects with the macho-man flamboyance of disco. The band set up shop at those crossroads a decade ago as the Wildbunch, a moniker that reflects the outlandish extremes to which frontman Dick Valentine has taken his village of people with rawk noms like Tait Nucleus (keyboards), the Colonel (guitar), and, as the E6 transformation set in, drummer Percussion World, guitarist Johnny Na$hinal, and bassist Smorgasbord! So as that opening acoustic blues riff gives way to piano codas, screaming leads, and overcharged power chords, Valentine makes a full menu out of a salacious conceit concerning a condiment in “Showtime,” urging in his best Jack White slur, “Put a little mustard on it!” He gets Ronald plastered in “Down at McDonelzzz,” raps his way around a Chic-ish groove topped with vintage synth funk in “Dance Pattern,” and hooks up with a girl named “Kukuxumushu” in an electro-garage grinder of the same title before taking “a ride with Succubus Sally” to the “bowling alley” and falling in love with “Hollywood Heather . . . another angry trendsetter.” Valentine’s operatics and relentless rhyming may verge on grating by the end of these 16 tracks, but he sweetens every dose with amusing free-associated couplets like “I know my shit from Shinola/I’m sick of eating your stale granola” (“Dirty Looks”) and out-of-the-blue (not-blues) salvos like “I have never understood why anybody likes Lenny Kravitz” (“Lenny Kravitz”). He ought to try putting a little mustard on Lenny.

Electric Six + Willowz + Golden Dogs | Middle East downstairs, 480 Mass Ave, Cambridge | November 14 | 617.864.EAST

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