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 There’s a good chance that if you so much
flicked on the TV or radio or picked up a newspaper over the past week
or two then you’ll be all too aware that the Scissor Sisters have a new
album out.
As the Sisters’ publicity machine spun into overdrive ahead of this
follow up to their eponymous 2004 smash, everywhere we’ve turned
recently, Jake Shears, Ana Matronic and their playful pals have been
there, larking about and trying to get us to check out their latest
release, Ta-Dah.
And so we did. If for no other reason than out of hope that they might
disappear from our screens, airwaves and publications and give us a bit
of peace.
Not that we have anything against New York’s most camp and fantastic 70s
throwbacks; their dark yet gleeful disco-pop is the sort of stuff to
which only the most morbid of souls could refuse a smile, whist their
’04 cover of Pink Floyd’s ‘Comfortably Numb’ was perhaps the best single
of that year.
However, as with most things in life, sometimes too much of a good thing
is more than enough.
Which doesn’t seem to be a concept Scissor Sisters have really grasped
all that well.
For here, the band, completed by Del Marquis (guitars), Paddy Boom
(drums) and the bizarrely titled ‘Baby Daddy’ (pretty much everything
else) create their own voluminous fantasy land, built with imagination
on solid foundations of Elton John (a collaborator on this album) and
Disney where the likes of Abba, the Bee Gees and Supertramp regularly
join forces to play gigs.
Yet whilst Ta-dah does deliver bucket loads of extravagant, flamboyant
pop and sparking melodies, there’s a sense of the dark and doom in the
lyrics which gives this fabulous five-piece an edge over the hoards of
manufactured bubblegum acts polluting the name of pop music on a regular
basis.
Take the boisterous ‘She’s My Man’ for example, which contains the line
‘Well my girl takes her drinks with dust and rusty razorblades’ or the
rollicking ragtime affair of ‘Intermission’, which quite depressingly
declares that ‘we were born to die’. Well that’s a shame, we were hoping
to get married, have some babies and perhaps find the time to attend a
barbeque before we popped our clogs.
Elsewhere, the Sisters throw a whole caboodle of other elements into
this funky frolic fest, from a track based on a dream Shears had about
Paul McCartney (titled, funnily enough ‘Paul McCartney’) and a take on a
James Bond theme on the lush and whimsical ‘Land Of A Thousand Words’.
Yet for us, the stand-out track comes in the form of ‘Kiss You Off’, a
brash, raunchy number that sees Ana Matronic take centre stage and
deliver a sweet slap in the face after being lulled into a false sense
of blissful security with several tender ballads.
It’s a track that just about caps off the effervescent eclecticism of an
album which, whilst we’ll never quite understand why the Scissor Sisters
are so flippin’ huge in this country, we can’t deny is a enjoyable
affair.
Recommended Links:
www.scissorsisters.com – Scissor Sisters official website
www.myspace.com/scissorsisters - listen a full preview of ‘Ta-Dah’ @ the
Scissor Sisters official Myspace
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