Without wishing to sound too arrogant – on the cusp of the millennium I predicted that the music scene in the next century would take a step back to its indie roots with a distinctly modern twist. Come 2004, my theory was right. Our music scene was dominated by fantastically polished electro-indie-pop music – with bands like The Killers, Franz Ferdinand and The Kaiser Chiefs rocking our airwaves.
But amongst all these common musicians came the most glamorous of glam-rock bands ever to be seen on this planet – they were the Scissor Sisters.
Their debut was a perfect selection of electronically fuelled camp disco rock tunes, with the likes of ‘Filthy/Gorgeous’ and ‘Laura’ leading the way in the singles chart. It was adventurous, naughty, fabulous – everything anyone could want from a band, and the album went on to be the biggest selling album of 2004 here in the UK as well as being the 9th biggest selling album of the decade and the 51st biggest selling album of all time, meanwhile selling a whooping 3.3 million copies worldwide. Just as a bitchy side note: artists to have sold more than 2 million albums in the UK in the 21st century include Scissor Sisters, Dido, James Blunt, Keane and Robbie Williams – better known as AMAZING, dull, shite, dull and yawn.
A few years later, and they came mincing back on the scene with extra-camp “Ta-Dah!” – possibly the best album title ever – an album which shifted an equally amazing 3 million copies and was responsible for everyone’s favourite tune ‘I Don’t Feel Like Dancing’ – a song which went on to spend over half a year flouncing around the UK singles chart and was co-written by one Sir Elton John.
So far, so good. Hell! So far, so bloody fabulous! Scissor Sisters stood out amongst a crowd of drab Indie acts and weak pop songstrels as a powerful force not be reckoned with; with two massive albums and a string of singles better than tea and scones at your granny’s house!
Let’s quickly stop, actually, and note this: The reasons Scissor Sisters are amazing:
- Honky Tonk Pianos.
- Falsetto vs. Bass Vocals.
- Danceable Tunes vs. Heartrenching Songs
- Innuendos Ahoy!
- “RUB IT!”
- Elton John collaborations.
- New York Gay Underground Nightclub Scene.
- Babydaddy.
- The Pure Campness.
Imagine, then, the excitement, the anticipation, the expectation surrounding their third album, “Night Work”.
It’s not very good at all.
The problem is, it’s just not very Scissor Sisters. It’s not amazing. It’s not glamour. It’s barely camp!
If we were to personify their debut, it would be ‘poppers on the dancefloor of a fabulous gaybar with friends, Elton John blasting on the speaker and a glass of gin in your hand’. If we were to personify this album, it would be ‘coke with a stranger under a flickering broken tube-light of a drab gaybar’s graffitied toilet cubicle with Pet Shop Boys’. That’s a radical change.
I see what they’ve tried to do, which is to captivate an electro-rocky-80′s sound, but it just falls flat on its face. If the album were full on Eurythmics-style songs mixed with the ‘Sisters ever fantastic lyrics, the album would be an utter win. However, it’s not. The album sounds industrial, uninspired and tedious – one song runs into another sounding pretty similar to the one before.
It’s not like the only reason I like the Scissor Sisters is because of their insane campness, but it was a highly attractive quality which made them stand out like a rainbow on a council estate; it made even their most dark sounding songs like ‘Mary’ and ‘It Can’t Come Quickly Enough’ exciting and euphoric. They seem to have forgotten to even try and insert a little of their persona into this album, which is perhaps the biggest fail of all, because the truth is, if I listened to this album without knowing it’s artist, I would assume it were just another band with just another album, and frankly we have enough of those already.
Where does the album work? Well, ‘Fire With Fire’ is a euphoric anthem which makes me want to punch the air and jump up and down, leaving me breathless everytime I listen to it, with a quality to it I want to compare to Coldplay, even though I’m not really sure why. ‘Night Life’ is guitar fuelled and exciting in places, Jake’s voice is clear and bright, the lyrics are glorious and the song has a timeless quality to it – it’s perhaps the quality they were hoping to captivate on the rest of the album. ‘Invisible Light’ reminds me of a darker ‘Filthy/Gorgeous’ – it’s electronic and pulsing, the vocals are deep, breathy and sexy – the lyrics are fabulous, the sound is reminiscent of Pet Shop Boys. It’s actually very good.
Meanwhile tracks like ‘Skin The Cat’ and ‘Harder You Get’ drag the album down – the prior is frustratingly noisy to listen to, like a child has been let loose on technology, whilst the latter would be amazing if it didn’t feel like it were dragging itself through to the bitter end at it’s terrible sub-up-tempo crawl.
It isn’t what I (or a lot of fans) was expecting or hoping for. Fantastic euphoria has dimmed whilst dirty hardcore dystopia lingers amongst a woven rug of homoeroticism and memories of a time when 1980s electronica was alive and fresh. The light hasn’t gone out completely, they are still excellent craftsmen of music and their ambition and inspiration lingers somewhere between tracks on this album; we can only hope it comes out for album four.
