A lot was—rightfully—made about the James Murphy production on Free Energy’s self-titled debut: The DFA head touched up the band’s retro rock pastiche with flourishes of horns and strings and plenty of cowbell, making it one of 2010’s most enjoyable debuts. This time around Free Energy’s hooked up with another producer extraordinaire, John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr., Screaming Trees, Male Bonding, many more), and on their new single, “Electric Fever,” the hooks are still gloriously massive, the chorus still instantly singable, and the cowbell certainly hasn’t stopped conking. Agnello’s contribution here is a much more sparse feel that certainly leaves the band a tad more exposed than they were on their debut. But it’s a solid look, and the group takes advantage of it letting the drums and bass pound steadily away while the guitars crunch and wah-wah and fly together in harmonic glee, because what’s a Free Energy cut without dueling solos?
And that’s kinda thing about “Electric Fever”: It’s all its marks in more or less the same way any good Free Energy song should. The necessarily-exclamation-pointed lyrics—e.g. “Electric fever is in my blood! / You know it’s been there all my life!” or “Turn it on! / Turn it up! / Baby, keeping on running free!” or “We’ve been dancing! / All night long! / Dancing to a rebel’s song!”—are platitudes for sure and the “ohh ohh ohh”’s are used to full effect; but it’s not like this track is changing the world or anything, nor is Free Energy necessarily trying to pull a 180 and dropping some crazy shit on your dome. Which really doesn’t matter, because Free Energy are damn good at what they do and that’s probably why you’re smiling and tapping your foot.
