Heathens Come, Charlatans Go

Electric Six “Alone with Your Body”

It’s kinda amazing that it took Electric Six ten albums to make a fake Motown song, or more specifically, “white middle class bar band dudes playing soul music.” There’s about two layers of ironic distance in the music, and another added in the lyrics, in which Dick Valentine sings from the perspective of an ordinary lunk with zero sense of romance who’s just really honest about his focus on getting laid. The thing that really makes this song work is that the warm vibe of the music and the “hey, I’m just a simple dude” rhetoric in the lyrics make all of this seem friendly and cute, but the obvious irony punctures that, and makes you wonder why anyone would think this type of guy is anything less than pathetic, juvenile, and predatory.

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