I am not afraid to admit it, I grew up in the 80’s. I love arena rock. I can’t help it, like it or not it was gonna play a major factor in the soundtrack of my life…much like Jimmy Buffet. So I chose to like it. Just the same, I was in my formative years during disco’s reign, so it also has it’s own place in the weirdly nostalgic places of my mind. Now on the heels of one another come new albums from the kings of ‘nu:glamsco’ (i made that up…call it glam-disco-rock if you like your genres hyphenated), Electric Six and the queens of the nu:arena-rock, The Donnas.

Electric Six – I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master

Well, first off…it wins the award for Most Obnoxiously Long Album Title of 2007, so I am just gonna call it Exterminate from here on out. I first found E6 the same way a lot of Americans did, via those stupid fucking animated cats doing the E6 track, “Gay Bar”. A couple of weeks after seeing that flash animation for the nineteen hundredth time, I got a free sampler of their album, Fire, and fell in love as soon as I heard “Danger! High Voltage”, and while Fire seemed (and was) really gimmicky, the band followed it up with the album Senor Smoke. In my opinion this was (and still is) their strongest effort. If you are curious but haven’t ever heard E6, I would suggest you start there. They followed Senor with the mostly ignored album Switzerland. By the time the band got to Switzerland, Dick Valentine (vocals) was the sole surviving member of the band, and now they are preparing to release their fourth album, Exterminate. A much stronger effort than Switzerland, it’s an E6 album to the core. The electro nu:glamdisco sound in perfect tune with the “disaffected, angry, ironic, lustful tongue-in-cheek pomposity” you would expect from E6.

Electric Six – White Train
Electric Six – Down at McDonnelzz
Electric Six – It’s Showtime

Electric Six’s Official Site, Electric Six on myspace, Buy Exterminate

The Donnas – Bitchin’

Yes, I fucking like The Donnas and I don’t care if y’all know it! The Donnas ARE what Avril Lavigne’s handlers are trying to make her appear to be. Contrary to smug belief, The Donnas are not an assembled band. Just like any other band, they played garages together while they were kids in high school…or at least, that’s what we are told, and I have no reason not to believe it, since their core audience (I’d assume jr high/high school girls leaving their Fergie/Gwen stage and heading to their pop-punk smoke my first joint stage) don’t really care about such things. They have returned, fresh off thier divorce from Atlantic Records, with a album that conjures up the ghosts of the arena rock of the 80’s and proceeds to strike rock guitar poses with them. This album bleeds Joan Jett and would beat Gwen up when she got uppity about it, smoking in the school bathroom. If I had a daughter, she’d like The Donnas….and I’d be proud.

The Donnas – Girl Talk
The Donnas – Don’t Wait Up For Me
The Donnas – Like an Animal

The Donnas’ Official Site, The Donnas on myspace, Buy Bitchin’

In closing, I’d like to say that, yes, both of these albums are completely disposable. They’ll probably both go from heavy rotation to cd holder dust collectors in a matter of a month, but who cares? Not every album has to be important or groundbreaking or even personal. Sometimes a rock album can just be fun…yes, indie kids, rock and roll is allowed to just be vapid and cliche’ and fun sometimes. Rock and roll collapses under its own weight if you don’t let it go out, get drunk and have meaningless sex with a stranger sometimes. Both of these albums embody that spirit, and with the short days of winter crawling up on us, maybe some meaningless fun is exactly what you need.