When Dick Valentine and the Electric Six made their debut on the global music stage with 2003’s Fire, people took notice. Catchy melodies, playful lyrics, and vocals unlike all others earned the group worldwide fans, especially in the UK, where the songs “Gay Bar,” “Dance Commander,” and “Danger! High Voltage,” as well as their delightful videos, became chart-toppers. The band was ushered from their native Detroit to England, where they began a near-constant touring schedule that has taken them around the world and back to the U.S. many times over.

Now the Electric Six are prepping for the Hittin’ The Walls and Workin’ The Middle tour in anticipation of their fifth record, Flashy. Due in stores on October 21^st, their latest album features more of Dick’s wit, plenty of hooks, and the long-awaited arrival of “Gay Bar Part 2.”

Ben Kharakh: In previous interviews, you said that Switzerland was you at your most subtle, and I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me from Being the Master was just your fourth record. So how would you describe Flashy?

Dick Valentine: I believe that Flashy is a combination of those two — that is to say it is our most adult contemporary record and also our fourth record.

BK: What do you mean when you say “adult contemporary?”

DV: I think, when you look at songs like “Transatlantic Flight” and “Face Cuts,” those are, to me, adult contemporary. I kind of feel like Michael Douglas in The Jewel of the Nile or Romancing the Stone, that kind of a thing — a man in his early 40s who is looking for a very attractive woman in her 40s and they have a bottle of white wine and they have a condominium.

BK: Is the album the woman that you’re looking for?

DV: No, I’m not looking to be romantically involved with any of my albums. This is an ideal. We’re painting a picture, I guess, and this is my inspiration -– jackasses in their 40s with a great deal of money.

BK: Who comes to mind when you think of some jackasses?

DV: Well, again, Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner, Donald Trump was in his 40s once… I guess that would be the holy trinity right there.

BK: If you had the sort of wealth that they had, do you think that you would become a jackass?

DV: That’s exactly what would happen. That’s pretty much all I’ve ever wanted to be. I’ll tell you a little anecdote: A long time ago, we played in Seattle and we met this British guy, and the part of Seattle that we were in was that kind of neighborhood — a lot of 20-story condominium buildings with penthouses — and I had just met the guy, so I didn’t know anything about him, but I was like, “This is the life I want. I want that condominium lifestyle with the wine rack, the coffee table books, and I can call Tokyo and check on my finances.” And he just said immediately, “I’ve got that life. I live in one of those buildings,” and sure enough, we went to his apartment and it was exactly what I describe.

BK: What was it like to visit the apartment then?

DV: Amazing, he had all these bath oils… I mean, I didn’t take a bath with them, but I visited the bathroom and checked out his bath oils. He had all kinds of bottles of wine and a full bar overlooking the water, and so forth. He mentioned that one of the Seattle Supersonics lived next door to him and I said, “Oh which one?” His response was, “He’s black.”

BK: You mentioned being 40 and finding a woman to have white wine with as the ideal. Now if I read correctly, you’re engaged…

DV: I’m getting married next week.

BK: That is exciting news. What sort of feelings are you experiencing right now, with it being only a week away?

DV: We’re looking forward to it. It’ll be a fun weekend. Because of the venue that we’re getting married in, you can only invite 100 people. It’s just going to be weird seeing those 100 people in the same room together. It’s going to be a pretty surreal moment — not the actual committing to each other for the rest of our lives, but having that group of 100 people looking at you. It’s going to be weird.

BK: How does that compare with the 100 people looking at you when you’re on stage performing?

DV: Oh, it doesn’t compare at all. Let’s say I’m playing to 100 people, I probably don’t know any of them and they’re not there to watch me do some sort of ritual. That’s the weird part, like I have to perform what’s essentially a ritual in front of a bunch of people that I know and love, and when I perform on stage, it’s not anything like that at all.

BK: Are there any rituals you do before you take the stage, for example, or while you’re performing?  Because I know you do push-ups…

DV: Yeah, we do that, but that’s not a ritual. That’s because I need to do something during guitar solos and also it’s, as I’ve said, a great way to stay in shape. When you’re on tour, it’s hard to find time to exercise, so during a guitar solo is actually one of the only times I can find a free moment. That having been said, I’ve learned, by touring and collecting a bunch of opening bands over the years, that we are one of the few bands that does not have a pre-show ritual and asking all kinds of just stomach-churning rituals and, you know, things that bands do before they go on stage.

BK: Like what?

DV: Singing stupid songs and voice exercises and, you know, doing the Hokey Pokey — it’s terrible. Then you look at our band, and we all just kind of sit with our backs against the wall, getting the last second of Internet that we can get before we go on stage. And then somebody says, “We should’ve been on stage five minutes ago.” And then somebody goes to the bathroom and then somebody says, “We should’ve been on stage ten minutes ago.” We all kind of saunter up there and start playing. That’s our pre-show ritual.

BK: How will marriage change your life?

DV: I think it is one step closer to possibly having a kid, so in that sense, it would change probably the amount of touring we can do, but I’ve been with Kate for eight years now and I’ve lived with her for five years, so I don’t think the actual marriage is going to change anything. But yeah, like I said, now that kids are in play, that would probably change things.

BK: In that case, would you be moving to the suburbs?

DV: I guess, in the sense that Brooklyn is a suburb.

DV: I didn’t move from Detroit to live in New Jersey.

BK: Is that like a step down then?

DV: I did not move from Detroit to live in New Jersey. I’ll leave it at that.

BK: In the past, you’ve said that — this was when you were preparing for the fourth record — you said, “I like the three records we’ve made, and if we can make three more records that are as good as those, then I think we’ll be able to do this for another three to five years, and then I think I can retire.”

DV: I stand by those words.

BK: Will the next record be the pre-retirement record?

DV: It could be. We haven’t really started turning our attention to the next record yet. I do have a bunch of things Garage Band did and ideas, and if those end up being the record — I don’t know if they will — but it will definitely be a more ferocious record than anything we’ve done. Ferocious in a dance way, I guess; it’ll almost be like sort of Daft Punk. But we’ll see if that’s the direction we go. You never know until you do it.

BK: When it comes to what you’ve done so far with the Electric Six, how do you feel when you look back on all the times that you’ve had?

DV: I think that we’ve done everything that I set out to do. I know some people in the original line-up, their goal was millionaire status or nothing. I guess, in a sense, they’ve reached their goal too. But I always wanted to put out an album a year and continue touring, and just make the music that we’re capable of making and not really force it, and not really over think it and just continue going, and be happy with where we’re at. I think we’re doing it. I think we’ll continue to do it. We’ve got the right people for it, ever since we got people like Nash and Shipps on board. We have the right combo of people.

BK: In that case, there were people in the original line-up who intended for the Electric Six to be like a massive, money-making venture?

DV: There was a sense that you could control that outcome, and the attitude of “I’m not going to settle for second best” would get you to that point. I guess they didn’t understand all the outside factors that could mitigate such an outcome. You just have to realize what you can control in this position and understand that maybe making hundreds of thousands of dollars isn’t such a bad thing. That’s the outlook I take.

BK: What were some of those factors you alluded to?

DV: I think just the way the band was initially perceived out of the box in the UK, and I think we were, out of the gate, pretty much considered a novelty band. People looked at it and they saw “Gay Bar” and things like that and we didn’t get respect, and it kind of snowballed from there. I just think that was a big part of it. There are people thinking that once you’re on the radio and having a hit, that’s how you have to maintain that level. And I always looked at it like, “Well, we haven’t even scratched the surface of America yet.” America’s a place where you can tour, and the longer you stay on the road, the more albums you put out, you can build it up slowly. I don’t think building it up slowly was what people wanted.

BK: Was there ever a debate about changing your image to go more in line with what people expected of you?

DV: In those days, debate would be a nice word for what we were actually going through. There weren’t a whole lot of civilized debates, and I didn’t hear a lot in terms of what any change we could make other than maybe becoming much more over-the-top, like a ferocious guitar band. At that point, I think we would have ceased to be Electric Six and been something entirely different that I probably would have walked away from. I’m just glad it worked out the way it did.

BK: Well, I think, as someone who has been a fan since the release of Fire, that you guys have put out consistently high-quality records, and I know there’s a lot of anticipation for this release as well.

DV: Oh, thank you. I think that the people we’ve had on board since Fire have made it possible.

BK: In that case, I was thinking, since this interview will go up a little bit before the album actually comes out, we could give the people more insight into the album by going down the track list and having you talk about each song.

DV: Not a problem.

BK: Fantastic. Up first is “Gay Bar Part 2.”

DV: I remember when Senor Smoke came out, people would be asking us, especially in the UK, “What’s the name of your second record or your follow-up?” We would say, “It’s going to be called Gay Bar Part 2.” And they’d be like, “Amazing, brilliant. That’s just what we want from you.” Of course, we were joking, but then the seed for “Gay Bar Part 2” was out there, like we knew sooner or later we’d have to do a song called “Gay Bar Part 2.” I can’t remember exactly when we realized this would be the song. I had the opening lyrics floating around for a long time and it just kind of, overnight, evolved into what it became.

BK: “Formula 409”…?

DV: That was just something I wrote walking back home from a bar in Park Slope. I remember, maybe I had like a 20-block walk in front of me and just ended up writing those lyrics and pretty much had the melody of the lyrics in my head by the time I got home. It’s not a very complicated song, so you can kind of see the stumbling home drunk from a bar.

BK: How did the music video for it come about?

DV: That was kind of an idea I had, and then the director, Anthony Garth, took my idea and made it a bit more functional. The reason we did the video for “Formula 409” was that was the song that I felt lent itself to the idea the best out of any of them. We’re not necessarily looking at it as a single; we just thought that with the video concept, that song worked the best.

BK: What was the original concept for it?

DV: We were going to get abducted and brought into a more like flower-power acid-camp. It was going to be more special effects, psychedelic effects, more of an overall general trip-out vibe. Anthony liked the idea of us actually implementing the 409 into it to clean up Detroit, and I don’t know where the lizards came from at all. They were there the day we showed up. I’m happy with the way that it came out.

BK: “We Were Witchy Witchy White Women”…?

DV: I always wanted to do a repetitive song with a lot of lyrics, sort of like, “The End of the World as We Know It.” Also I always wanted to do a song with someone who’s got a voice like mine doing a first-person narrative of a teenage girl. So I killed two birds with one stone.

BK: “Dirty Ball”…?

DV: I had the riff laying around for a while. I wrote this around the Larry Craig bathroom incident. The idea of a 60-something senator soliciting gay sex in a men’s room, it just brought up the phrase “dirty ball” for some reason. Very few people even heard of Larry Craig or Idaho at the time. I didn’t know Idaho was out there and I certainly didn’t know who Larry Craig was. You learn something new every day.

BK: “Lovers Beware”…?

DV: This was a conscious effort to write a Guided by Voices sort of song, I guess, just because me and Mike, the drummer, are huge Guided by Voices fans and we realized that we’ve never really done anything that sounded like that, so I think this is sort of a conscious attempt to go in that direction.

BK: Are there any other artists who you would like to do an homage to?

DV: Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any. I think the band itself lends itself to Pixie, Talking Heads kind of stuff, and those are two of my favorite bands. Direct homages… If something comes up, if I hear something and think, “Man, I’ve got to write a song like that.” I don’t know, maybe DMX. Maybe I’ll do an homage to DMX next.

BK: “Your Heat is Rising”…?

DV: I actually had the lyrics in a different format and it was less accessible, and then this real simple four-chord riff came along. I just transferred the lyrics that I had to this and turned it into basically a Marcy’s Playground song. It’s a really good song and it sounds really good live.

BK: “Face Cuts”…?

DV: I think this was the last song that we recorded. I was just messing around with Garage Band and then wrote the lyrics pretty much on the fly. I was just scribbling them down and recorded them, so it was certainly pretty quick. It’s about that real plastic, Hollywood kind of ideal where people are just living to party at these ridiculous clubs and be on television, and that sort of thing. It’s always a fun topic.

BK: How does this relate to “Fabulous People”?

DV: I think “Face Cuts” is the underbelly of that world, whereas “Fabulous People” is actually looking more at the people who enable those people. I think “Fabulous People” is more of a rip on the people who buy the tabloids and stay at home and watch the shows. That’s the constant of “Fabulous People,” is these people are pulling one over on you, whereas “Face Cuts” is just these people are pathetic.

BK: Sometimes, when I listen to music, I can imagine a music video for it, and for “Fabulous People,” I imagined yourself and the band singing the song on tabloids, tabloid newspapers, as though you were celebrities yourselves.

DV: That’s a great idea. If you’d like to direct that, we’ll be available sometime in December.

BK: If someone had a green screen and a camera and they wanted to make a music video for you guys, that’s something you’d be up for?

DV: Yeah, as long as we have the time and we like the idea.

BK: “Heavy Woman”…?

DV: We were somewhere in either Iowa or Missouri, just like a real middle-of-nowhere stretch of the road, and we stopped for gas. This woman and either her brother or boyfriend came in, and she was just morbidly obese, and obviously you have sympathy, but my sympathy went out the window when I saw her buying jumbo size Three Musketeer bars and Twinkies. That was the part I couldn’t believe. She wasn’t making the situation any better, and I haven’t walked an inch in her shoes, so I don’t know what it’s like. I just remember at that moment thinking, “Man, this is bad.” We got back in the van and I thought of the opening lyric, “Everyday she gets by is just another day closer to the day she dies.” There it was. It’s a pretty painful song, but I felt like I needed to do something at that time to expunge that image from my mind. The song actually became more and more comedic than I think I wanted it to be.

BK: Another way to interpret the phrase “Heavy Woman” is that she’s heavy with depression and sadness.

DV: There’s that too. I mean, obviously she’s going through a whole host of issues. I do have sympathy for anyone in that situation, but yeah, it was tough to understand it and, like I said, maybe I regret that it became more comedic than it should have been. But it is what it is and you’ll probably hear it live.

BK: “Flashy Man”…?

DV: We became fans of a woman down in Atlanta named Alexis Tyler who is on YouTube and if you Google it — Google the phrase “penis power” — you’ll find the video that inspired this, and she’s incredible. She’s just a very talented, inspirational woman and just rambles. She’s like a Dr. Ruth for the Atlanta area. So this song is just basically about that.

BK: “Watching Evil Empires Fall Apart”…?

DV: I felt like, after doing a song like “Formula 409,” I needed something to counter it in terms of lyric-writing ability. It’s kind of a sappy Coldplay kind of song, but I think when we want to be Coldplay, we do it better than Coldplay.

BK: “Graphic Designer”…?

DV: I just wanted to do an homage to my wife, who is a graphic designer — just wanted to show my appreciation for her skills.

BK: “Transatlantic Flight”…?

DV: This is a really old song that we had talked about bringing back. I recorded it in 2000 when I was actually thinking about making another Dirty Shame record. We re-recorded for Flashy, and I think this version on the album is way better than the one I did myself. If we can pull it off live, then I think it’ll be a show-stopper.

BK: “Making Progress”…?

DV: This is probably my favorite song on the record. It’s just really poppy, really catchy. I think the lyrics are just about some of the best I’ve written. I like the vocoder aspect of it. I always just like anything that’s kind of got a whistle-while-you-work vibe, which this one does. It’s going to be tough to do live; maybe we’ll do a Gospel version of it. I’ve been thinking about doing a Gospel version. We’ll figure it out, but it’s probably my favorite song on the record.

BK: This album, like many of your other albums, is eclectic in style. Is there any style that you want to work in but haven’t had the opportunity to?

DV: Yeah, a whole lot of them. I think I could pull of a Tom Waits kind of thing. I’d like to do a Van Morrison Astral Weeks kind of album, where it’s all like acoustic guitars and strings and flutes and things like that. I’d like to do more hip-hop work; I’d like to do more electronic work. I’m equal opportunity.

BK: What you were saying about the Van Morrison-esque album? Would that be the sort of thing you’d approach as the troubadour, the solo shows that you do?

DV: I don’t know. I currently don’t own an acoustic guitar. The last show I did was in Portland, Oregon, and Delta Airlines, when I boarded the flight back East, actually had me sign a waiver for the first time ever — “The airline is not responsible for damage of your guitar.” So I signed it and then, of course, my guitar, when I picked it up, was smashed in half. So I don’t know if they knew that the type of people that they hired to handle the baggage there in Portland were Neanderthals, or just a coincidence. Obviously, there’s nothing I could do about it. I don’t own a guitar; I haven’t bothered to get one yet. I will, though.

BK: Should we expect more troubadour shows in the future?

DV: Yeah, I always have a good time doing them. I don’t have any immediate plans, but certainly I’m due for some more. Maybe next year.

BK: Bands like The Flaming Lips occasionally work on films; sometimes bands explore avenues such as putting out films or perhaps having their own television type of shows. Is that something the Electric Six have ever considered?

DV: I am considering, at some point, getting a good camera and just maybe doing more YouTube kind of stuff. I don’t know what it’ll be, but yes, I definitely want to do stuff at my own pace that will be related to the band. I don’t know what that is yet, but it’s definitely looking more visual than audio these days.

BK: In the past, the band has released many music videos. Should we expect a few for this album as well?

DV: Well, a friend of mine is doing a claymation video for “Making Progress,” and he hopes to have that wrapped up, so I think that will be in the vain of the “Showtime” video where it’s just fully animated, where it doesn’t have anyone from the band in it. The experiment of doing lots of videos was a Switzerland thing, so I think the only video that you’ll see the band in has already been done.

BK: Do you ever think there’d be like an Electric Six concept album?

DV: There could be. We’d have to come up with a concept first now, wouldn’t we?

BK: I know you used to write sci-fi in high school. Is a space opera outside of the realm of possibility?

DV: I don’t think so. You look at what The Flaming Lips are doing with this Christmas movie and it doesn’t seem to be… I think you have to go lightly in that area. I think if we did a concept record, we wouldn’t be as daring.

BK: What sort of concept could it be then?

DV: I don’t know. I’m pretty void of concepts. You know, you put me on the spot. I get angry when I’m cornered like this. I lash out. You’re trying to turn me into Sarah Palin here.

BK: I guess, word of advice to future interviewers, “Do not put Dick in a corner.”

DV: Yeah, don’t put me in a corner. Please don’t put me in a corner.