That’s like banging some chick (Girl A) and afterward thinking to yourself, “Man… that was pretty good, but ten years ago, Girl B was so much better.
Tags: dick valentine, electric six, franz ferdinand, heartbeats and brainwaves, music reviewĪ good music critic should know not to compare the artists new work to their first, or any previous albums. In its next attempt, Electric Six will have to either return to that old oafish manliness or finally slough it off. With Heartbeats and Brainwaves, Electric Six has graduated from the unashamedly phallocentric to the mutedly phallocentric, and that, as it turns out, is no improvement.
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They don’t make up for an album full of bad songwriting.
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And “Free Samples,” an anthem literally for people giving out free samples, is so massively idiotic that if you don’t get frustrated with it, it might just get a chuckle out of you.īut these occasional winners are only moderately interesting. “Intergalactic Version” achieves a big ethereal sound, complete with gospel-esque “whoa-oh” backup incantations. “Gridlock” enters Franz Ferdinand territory with interesting results, painting a painful picture of an apprehensive dance-floor hook-up. Some of the album’s songs succeed more than others. Heartbeats and Brainwaves lacks addictive songwriting, and needs a song that can stand out amid the unending online hurricane of new music. Say what you will about “Gay Bar,” but it did rock the Internet for years with its catchy melody and proudly stupid lyrics. Normally this would lead to a lack of overall artistic cohesion, even though one might expect each band member’s contribution to be especially dense with inspiration.Īlas, nothing here will find a home in your next party’s playlist. Some triple-dipped, which resulted in a 14-track final product. Heartbeats and Brainwaves was written in an unusual way - Dick Valentine asked each of Electric Six’s members to write at least two songs. And the song’s chorus, though catchy, certainly doesn’t approach the greatness of earlier Electric Six earworms. Instead, it adds up to a muddled montage of imagery.
Valentine croons, I’m never good at saying the right things / sometimes I say too much / sometimes I feel like a puppet with no strings / desperate and dying for your touch.īut this potentially interesting love song is so drenched in the mandatory manly non sequiturs it utterly fails to tell a cohesive story. Take, for example, the second track, “French Bacon.” This tells a tragic story of two people, the narrator and a nameless girl, who are tangled in a contradictory relationship: a painful attachment they both need. What results is an unfortunate compromise, a muted-sounding rendition of its older dumb-but-fun style that is at best unevenly enjoyable. In Heartbeats and Brainwaves, Electric Six tries to extricate itself, but also can’t quite pull itself away, from the now-worn unabashed manliness of its early days. Electric Six is older now, and evidently getting tired of the testosterone rock trimmings that long underpinned its popularity. This is surprising for a band that once reveled in dumbness. At one point in the track, frontman Dick Valentine sings I’m the king of the submarines / making terrible music for teens. Heartbeats and Brainwaves’ opener “Psychic Visions” seemingly constitutes an admission of wrongdoing. And so its catalog, while sometimes addictive, largely lacks in lyrical heft. But by catering to each of these rivaling demographics, the band offers little substance to either. So, if you love Electric Six, you are one of two things: a hipster-literate cynic who sneers at stereotypical frat bros, or a stereotypical frat bro. Its message is that concertedly manly men are really just overcompensating. In contrast, “Gay Bar,” with almost 20 million hits on YouTube, greatly differs from Electric Six’s more popular songs by gleefully lambasting male sexual insecurities by blending manly vocals with nonsensically homoerotic lyrics. Songs like “Danger! High Voltage” and “Body Shot,” on one hand, glorify primal dance floor scenes of fearless sexuality. Though Heartbeats and Brainwaves features an assortment of somewhat engaging tracks, the album as a whole is riddled with poorly crafted songwriting and mutedly phallocentric motifs.