Flak Magazine: Scissor Sisters' self-titled album, 08.03.04

New York's Scissor Sisters seem, after a cursory look, to be an easy outfit to categorize and file away. Their name is derived from a euphemism for a lesbian sex act. Photos of the band on its website emphasize the outsized dress from all manner of '80s bands, from boas and ripped mesh tees to formal suits redesigned with an insolent-truant-schoolboy sneer. They're a hit in the UK, and are apparently poised to lay down some tracks with Aussie royalty. And their sound begins, and ends, under the synthetic shimmer of a glitterball. What have we got? An ironic collection of one-note Johnnies, who lean on salaciousness and a winking appropriation of a cornball music genre that pads an album's length but lacks context? That would explain their popularity on the British Isles, where many leading acts of the past 10 years routinely release albums heavy on chaff and light on wheat.

Scissor Sisters are not so easily contained. Frontman Jake Shears, multi-instrumentalist Babydaddy, singer Ana Matronic, guitarist Del Marquis and drummer Paddy Boom have absorbed some 30 years of disparate styles and have trusted their instincts. Their songs, as a result, brim with soul and panache. The glam dress and winking band name are part of the band ethos; the effect is comparable to that of the high-wattage, hedonistic Studio 54 on its patrons back in the '70s. As Anthony Haden-Guest recalls, "dancers... dappled and splashed by light, shed the dull gravitational tug of quotidian life, and lost themselves in... a voyeuristic jostle, like a fairground." (Ana Matronic, who describes her look as a cross between Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita and the star of a Russ Meyer film, has compared Scissor Sisters live to the circus rolling into town.) Their personas are not a crutch — and this band knows crutches, as evidenced by the track "Tits on the Radio," an indictment of style over substance in popular music. You can't see feather boas and Russ Meyer-wear on the radio, either, but you can hear melodies, and Scissor Sisters are rich with them.

The disc is sequenced to approximate a night on the town, moving in its 43 minutes from buoyancy and expectation to blissful inebriation to randy come-ons to the inevitable come-down (at around three o'clock in the morning, per the lyrics of the affecting "Return to Oz.") It's not a wallflower's club tour. The band is amped, and even the ballads quake with fat bass lines, piano chords issued with sledgehammer bravado and the vocals hustled to the front of the mix. Shears has an engaging, expressive baritone, and his secret weapon is a sly falsetto, put to particularly good use on "Comfortably Numb" and "Filthy/Gorgeous."

"Comfortably Numb," the Floyd song that draped high schoolers the world over in self-righteous ennui, is remade as a willing descent into medicated bliss. Multitracked falsettos glide over a whopping bass line and some computer-drone keyboards; the singers coax you into accepting that "there is no pain, you are receding/ a distant ship floats on the horizon." It really shouldn't work at all, but it does. (Apparently, the song's author, dour Roger Waters, has given the group the thumbs-up on its deconstruction. "I bet you anything he owns a three-piece white polyester suit and is boogying down to [the song]," Ana Matronic told the BBC.

"Filthy/Gorgeous," is an arch and horny piece of work. Over a slinky soul groove and some come-hither whispers from Ms. Matronic, Shears sings:

When you're walkin' down the street/ And a man tries to get your business/ And the people that you meet/ Want to open you up like Christmas/ You got to wrap your fuzzy with a big red bow/ Ain't no sum bitch gonna treat me like a ho/ I'm a classy honey kissy huggy lovey dovey ghetto princess.

"Mary," on the other hand, is a sweet, piano-driven ballad about a friend in need of reassurance that achieves sweep and emotion using the gaudier props of '80s love songs — a distant sax, the doorbell chimes of an electric organ, the visual image of the lilting background singers brushing back their center-parted, feathered hair. "Take Your Mama," which leads off with a cutting, salsa-inspired round on an acoustic guitar, is a primer on coming out to your mother during a night out. The band informs, "We're gonna take your mama out all night/ Yeah, we'll show her what it's all about/ We'll get her jacked up on some cheap champagne/ We'll let the good times all roll out." Even better is the lascivious rhythm section grind of "Lovers in the Backseat," future soundtrack of all manner of dance-floor bacchanalia, in which Shears sings:

There's lovers in the backseat/ Jealous glances, now I'm looking for another song/ On the radio/ I'll take you to a side street/ In the shadows you can touch one another now/ And I'll just watch the show.

Scissor Sisters are not like that postgraduate friend of yours who blankets her bedroom in Trolls and Hello Kitty products and invites you to wink with her at the kitsch-fest — you accept her, finding it amusing at first, then slightly nauseated and concerned later on. They may draw a bit too much from some of their gaudier predecessors, but Scissor Sisters' sound is original. The powerful melodies are impossible to shake, and grooves compel you to move, giving the album the authority of a greatest-hits collection. The delight that clearly went into making Scissor Sisters, clothing Scissor Sisters, and bringing the circus to town is persuasive. And, of the band members' names, Paddy Boom is definitely my favorite.

— Christopher Hickman (hickatz at mindspring dot com)