'Well, yeah,' nods Surge, cringing mildly, 'but we busted two amps, so we mostly played ping-pong.' 'Recording at Abbey Road was simply amazing.' 'At the same time,' Surge returns, 'there was always a bit of a traditional, underground base of R 'n' B, original rock 'n' roll guitar-band stuff it's great ya know, but it can be really orthodox.'Īnd it's the band's intense fear and hatred of the 'orthodox' that results in such nonsensical bites of sound as the rollicking 'Electric Demons In Love', or Queen-esque stomp of 'Dance Commander': the rabid, raving alternative to the mundane, and ingredients that have denoted many of the band's already memorable encounters.īassist Disco gets nostalgic. We always made sure we were doing something interesting.' No-one would get a show when you went to see these bands. 'A lot of the bands around when we started out, were very arty or shoegazery. The Rock 'N' Roll Indian shuffles in his seat, lighting a cigarette. 'I mean,' grimaces Dick, 'there's even a band from there called Christ-Puncher.' And being more a rock band was considered silly, stupid or whatever, and that simply made the idea of rocking out that much more appealing.'
Well, there was a big post-rock thing going on. 'Back then,' Joebot continues, reminiscing, 'the scene in Detroit was really. We're probably a better group now, and it's possibly made us more interesting than where we were six weeks into the band. 'There's no such thing as earning or deserving stuff,' he ponders, adding curiously, 'The universe is very random, as all this proves. Suddenly, a raspy, implausibly deep husk of a voice booms across the room's four walls. 'We could still just as easily be back playing the same places in Detroit.' 'We do feel that we've paid our dues, so to speak, but we don't feel that those dues necessarily led us to this point,' opens Valentine, on the matter of the band's recent foray into notoriety. But, for the purposes of the interview, I'm Dick Valentine.' That such an action was oddly suspicious - let alone peculiarly arousing - paid testament even more-so towards the deep perplexity of E6. Come the 21st Century, and XL Recordings sees the broader potential for this irony-tinged set of marsupials - and the rest is irrelevant.ĭocumented whilst part of their debut, headline UK tour (proper), all five/six members of the band - inclusive of mysteriously silent keyboardist, Tait - are hounded and rounded into their dressing-room for the night and just prior to the conversation, the combo's vocalist shakes the hand of rockfeedback, prior to uttering, 'My name's Tyler.
Bred in '96, residents of a Michigan scene consisting of uninspired musos too stoned and uncreative to spawn anything other than yawn-inducing stabs at psychedelia, The Wildbunch (as they were then known, a name-change soon ensuing due to legal-kafuffles) were happy being different, playing shows ridden with inane light-shows and low-brow theatrics to a reasonable response. In equal doses bizarre, shocking, hilarious, absurd and joyous, its cheeky ridiculousness is both sexy and demented, whilst its sheer irreverence makes it altogether more challenging than Radiohead.īut it didn't always come this easy.
Thankfully, their debut-LP 'Fire' is littered even further with such matter. Novelty for the refined, you could almost deem it. A band simply with the sheer, overriding notion to produce soundtrack-music for the best party in the world, without losing the concept of creating lasting tunes along the way. None of the dressing-room tantrums, nor 'yeah, man' dreariness of ill-thought-out interview-quotes. More than anything, the Detroit quintet's initial, shameless stab at the hit-parade was a marked return to a rarely-reared concept in rock 'n' roll - get this, kids: fun. And, honestly now, who'd have guessed that they'd still be with us months later, ready to follow it up with something quite as outlandish, hilarious and - simply - genius as the charging throttle of 'Gay Bar', their second single. Yet, simply, there aren't many compositions quite as sensational as Electric Six's debut of early 2003 - the shimmering, disco-rock-punk-pop slice of seedy, grubby naughtiness of 'Danger! High Voltage'. There aren't many songs around where you distinctly remember the precise time and place you first heard it.