Get Down, Get Down, Get Sorta Down Tonight!

I decided to rewrite my Scissor Sisters as a full length with much more personal input.

Scissor Sisters are our hope.

They are for those of us who missed the 1970s, that glittery decade fueled of disco glamour, questionable fashions, random drug use, and even more random sex. Didn’t some of us sadly watch as our parade float of excess roll into the pinstriped Wall Street of Reaganomics, with “Just Say No” and friends and lovers dying of AIDS? Some of us – like me - became adults in the paler glow of the 1980s where so much more than just silence equaled death. Some of us suffered through grunge and clasp at raves as our chance to get down, get down, get down tonight. Some of us are so young, we didn’t even have that.

Scissor Sisters are our saints, our deliverance to a land of outrageous costumes, high falsettos, flashy lights, and disco balls.

For a boy from Iowa, the Sisters' pillaging of this glam decade is heady stuff. They dress like Ziggy Stardust, they sing like Bryan Ferry and the Bee Gees, and they dance like Abba on speed. In my youth, this abandon was only seen white-washed in Saturday Night Fever on late-night HBO. So, now I admit, I have a big heart on for Scissor Sisters.

For those of us who love the Scissor Sisters, it would be hard to live up to the sheer joy and massive hype of their first album. However, the sophomore release Ta-Dah comes damn close, even with some trippy sojourns through the dark nightlife of the Soul Train. Jake Shear’s falsetto and the band’s glittery music still sound like they’re channeling 1970s Elton and the Gibb brothers. But then again, when you have a successful formula, why change?

And the Scissor Sisters do have a pretty solid approach. By mixing B-52s every-concert’s-a-gay-party panache with updated disco gloss, they had the biggest UK album of 2004 with their debut, Return to Oz. Critics said things like “Thank God!” and “[this is] their first greatest hits album.” (The Scissor Sisters caused barely a blip in America, but then again, our Brit friends were always a little better at reveling in glam and weirdness. Bowie, anyone? Or for that matter, Boy George?)

On Ta-Dah, their follow-up album, the party they started is still in full swing, but a few people are starting to get bitter! (Sadly, it’s bound to happen at every great gathering…) The danciest song on the album, one of the two that Sir Elton helped write, is entitled “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’.” Some song lyrics even go so far as to say “I can’t decide whether you should live or die.” In short, the boogie-oogie-oogie sound of the first album is always there, but now it’s filtered through a strong sieve of regret and muted with a crunchy production that buzzes in your ear like coming down hard off of a handful of Studio 54-style Quaaludes.

The Scissor Sisters cannot keep this Me Generation exorcism going on forever, true. So, the song “Intermission” has woe-is-me lyrics (think Morrissey or Rufus Wainwright), but it’s implemented with gorgeous string composition by the legendary Van Dyke Parks. “The Other Side” sounds like a particularly good Roxy Music homage (or plagiarism, take your pick.) Both tracks are good indications of where the band could go next.

The truth is Ta-Dah is a perfectly lovely if gloomy dance album. The Scissor Sisters wrest their strength not invention, but in re-invention. They have successfully mined and uploaded the 70s sound. And they do it with a true aficionado’s love. However, it’s obvious - like the sad passing of the decade they lift so much from – that next time, the primary thing they’ll need to re-invent is themselves.