Damn, but “Gay Bar” is a great song.

Back in 2003 I saw Detroit’s Electric Six pound the track into submission at the Croc, and anyone who thinks a song can’t be pants-soilingly funny and still rock shoulda been there. Much as I loved ’em, though, I questioned whether or not they had more in ’em besides that track and “Danger! High Voltage” (the other great toe-tapper from their debut platter, Fire).

Happily, eight years on, these garage-disco goofballs continue knocking my naysaying duff to the dance floor. Credit lead singer/ham act par excellence Dick Valentine, who brings a sense of the ridiculous as finely-honed as his rock-god-in-soul-threads yowl to the table–he sounds like Steppenwolf’s John Kay fronting the Trammps. And his band’s weld of scrappy garage rock, disco, and arena rock never lets up for a minute. 

Zodiac, the Six’s newest effort, keeps the party going, (slightly) downplaying E6’s garage rock elements in favor of an even-more-prominent dance groove (and a pinch of arena-filling pomp).  Any band that can lay down a cover of The Spinners’ “The Rubberband Man” (see video above) on the same album as the gleefully cheesy power-ballad-on-laughing-gas “I am a Song” is doing something damned right.  And you can sure as shooting expect it to sound like gangbusters live at Neumo’s on Saturday. Tickets, $13 advance, are still available.