reax music magazine :: music + culture » Reviews » Electric Six - Flashy

It's never a good sign when a band kicks off its new album with a song referencing its five-year-old moment in the sun. And while Detroit's Electric Six was once famous for reveling ironically in all the worst elements of rock stardom, "Gay Bar Part Two" comes off less as a winking acknowledgement of the band's current status, and more like admitting defeat. It's a vibe that permeates Flashy, in which much of the clever has been stripped from their formerly cleverly dumb lyrics, leaving the - yup, you guessed it. "Formula 409"? Seriously? "Graphic Designer" can't hold a candle to Cake's "Short Skirt/Long Jacket" when it comes to modern-career-lady satire, and "Heavy Woman" is too sad to even be offensive. The music of "We Were Witchy Witchy White Women" and, heh, "Dirty Ball" nearly achieve the propulsive, danceable arena-rock bombast of previous efforts, but most of the rest just wallows in tired heavy-blues grooves. Ultimately, the whole thing stinks of making a half-assed effort, in the name of pre-emptively shrugging it off as such. - Scott Harrell