There’s a lot of reasons to go totally Al Reynolds for Scissor Sisters second full-length album Ta-Da. Hipster mulleted, adorably doll-like front man Jake “Tiny Dancer” Shears is a very talented singer (form Gibb false to Le Bon swoon), songwriter and performer. As are the rest of the mister sisters, namely Shears co-songwriter Babydaddy. Shears brings his morbid obsessions like Anderson Cooper (why’d their paragraph of amore disappear from Coop’s Wiki page?) and together with the Sisters they throw down their cutting Disco with a little Melle Mel and Grandmaster Flash. But some of it is a little tired - Vitalic tired (Ana Matronic’s “Kiss You Off”). Sorry girl in the band.
Duran “The Reason We Got Into Music” Duran’s influence is felt in an “Ordinary World” sort of way in “The Other Side”. “The Other Side” is a synthfabulous new waver with an infectious bassline about (platonic) eternal love. Wherein Judy Garland, another early influence, has the tragic final words - from Judy Garland Speaks! Garland’s self-recorded thoughts for her not-meant-to-be autobiography - “And I have a right to be in love. And I have a right to be loved. There’ll be ‘over the rainbow’ for me.” “Might Tell You Tonight” is another pop love song done right - with all the earnestness (getting giggly over his toothbrush on the sink, that sort of thing) of “I Think I Love You” and the saccharine beats too for that matter.
Childhood favorite Elton John (!) co-penned Scissor Sisters fun, flamboyant clap along first single “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing” (he does) and the surprisingly depressing “Intermission” (sings Shears, “We were born to die”) at the Sisters very own Discoball Jazzfest Studios. In between Ta-Da’s Disco (“Ooh”, “Paul McCartney”) and the witty, homicidally ambivalent “I Can’t Decide” (reminiscent of Carol Burnett’s dehydrated rendition of “Little Girls” from Annie) we learn some…interesting…things about Shears; he is a strong black woman (“Everybody Wants The Same Thing”) rainbows are simply candy-colored frowns (“Intermission”) and that he is capable of writing more “She’s My Man”-style songs than Brandon Flowers. For shame The Killers oeuvre, for shame! |