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The B-52’s for the post-Simpsons era, the five members of Detroit’s Electric Six make dancing not only fun again, but funny. In the proud tradition of the band’s 2003 debut, Fire, there’s an emergency in progress on the new Señor Smoke, and the only solution is to dance as if German techno-punks are controlling your ass via remote control, while hairy American bikers shoot at your feet. In “Dance Epidemic,” the Six’s Lord Byron-like front man, Dick Valentine, sets the scene to the band’s impeccable fusion of Eurodisco and ’70s cock-rock: “Your body goes to waste every minute you don’t give it to me/I’m dying for your sins on the dance floor, can’t you see.” But his finest moment yet may be, “You scorcher! You scorcher! Fried egg on your face, girl,” from “Be My Dark Angel.” On paper, of course, this all sounds like harmless novelty music, but to see and hear the Electric Six is to witness a band so seriously silly as to make most “serious” bands simply laughable.
