1) Laura; 2) Take Your Mama; 3) Comfortably Numb; 4) Mary; 5) Lovers in the Backseat; 6) Tits on the Radio; 7) Filthy/Gorgeous; 8) Music Is the Victim; 9) Better Luck; 10) It Can’t Come Quickly Enough; 11) Return to Oz
Bold, outrageous and cunningly catchy - a whole lot of expert songwriting beneath the colourful exterior fuels one of the decade's most outstanding debuts.
Key tracks: "Laura", "Comfortably Numb", "It Can't Come Quickly Enough"
The debut albums that tend to become cherished classics tend to have one or two things in common: they either break genre boundaries in a revolutionary fashion and/or they’re fueled by an almost arrogant ambition and passion. Scissor Sisters’ self-titled album belongs to the latter category. Like many great debuts it sounds like it’s on a mission to prove the world that there is a great hole in the music map and this band is there to fill it - that they’re needed to exist. Then they go out their way to prove this with youthful energy, a confident attitude and a certain level of audacity, sporting a belief that they can do no wrong. It’s no wonder that Scissor Sisters’ first album became huge - it sounds like that was the only choice that could ever possibly exist.
Talking about the Scissor Sisters in the present day tends to be a bit of a disappointing affair. Ignoring the fact that they’re effectively a pop act and one from an era before it suddenly became cool for hip music geeks to like pop music, they’re one of those acts who bear the downside of releasing a brilliant debut album: the feeling that all their inspiration was spent on that one initial explosion and ever since they’ve been left wondering what to do. The band’s career since has become a series of diminishing returns, difficult recording sessions, long periods of absence, underwhelming singles and lead singles that feel like they’re pandering towards the charts and which bear no similarity whatsoever to their parent albums. When the group announced in late 2012 that they were going on an undetermined hiatus, it was hardly a shock surprise announcement. They’re likely going to be delegated to footnote mentions in the greater annals of music history eventually - unfortunately - but there was a reason why for a while they did feel like a genuine event. And that’s the first album.
During the time their flame burned the brightest, the Scissor Sisters managed to create the perfect combination of songwriting and attitude, a package of incredible hooks fueled by world-conquering audacity. The audacity is arguably the most prominently visible: nevermind the salacious lyrics all over the record, the album’s most (in)famous moment is the cover of “Comfortably Numb”, a prog rock sacred cow ballad turned into a throbbing disco stomper seemingly aimed more to outrage classic rock fans than to pay tribute. But it also showcases the brilliance and the reason why the self-titled is so great: that this isn’t just a dull thump-thump take on a song done (solely) for the sake of attention. The production is cold and gloomy and despite the disco falsetto, the vocals are detached and melancholy. Its guise may be that of dancefloor filler, but the sound of the song and the way it has been realised bring it closer to melancholy original: the warm introspection has simply been switched into emotionless void of uncertainty. Our feet may tell that it’s something to dance to but it’s hard to really imagine the highlight of the party would be something this paranoid. And yet, it sounds playful - despite its gloomy underlinings, the Sisters know perfectly that they’re treading on sacred grounds and they find their fun from it, delivering the discotheque melancholia with their tongues firmly in their cheeks.
This delicate balance between fun and serious is the heart of the album. There is constant interplay of light and dark on the album, with both often making their presence know immediately after one-another. Make no mistake, it is a very extroverted album, filled with loud sounds and raucous energy, but time and time again it flips the coin on its other side and presents a different take on the band - one that goes into more personal depths and bares its soul on display. This fleshes out the band themselves, not only by offering variety but by underlining that underneath all the silly names (Ana Matronic, Babydaddy, etc) and fierce attitude there’s a group of people pouring their everything, their heart and soul, into this music.Tributes to lost and dead friends are scattered next to life-affirming optimism, the spectrum of life distilled into pop songs.
The big singles are still great, definitely - “Take Your Mama” and in particular “Filthy/Gorgeous” sound even better than ever now that they no longer play everywhere in the most inappropriate contexts, allowing the listener to re-evaluate them once more as the genuinely great tunes that they are (and in particular the brilliantly chaotic and busy production of “Filthy/Gorgeous” was completely lost in the background of whatever TV show that used it on any given moment years ago). But it’s the oft-unspoken album tracks that really show just how brilliant Scissor Sisters were at crafting songs in the mid-00s and why the debut is so great. In particular “It Can’t Come Quickly Enough”, hidden right near the end of the album, is the criminally unrecognised masterpiece moment of the album and arguably its grandest hour overall: a dramatic and dark half-ballad half-anthem that feels incredibly desolate and lonely as a complete opposite to how grand and stadium-filling it sounds, hitting those sweet evocative spots with killer accuracy. “Better Luck”, “Lovers in the Backseat” and the oft-forgotten debut single “Laura” are model examples of how to craft a perfect pop melody and if there’s one ‘outrageous’ moment I would have wanted the world adopt from this album, it’s the sexily bass-driven and deliciously attitude-sweating “Tits on the Radio”. The frequent nods towards popular music of yore brought to modern day add to the magic (the 80s-isms of “Better Luck”, the 70s singer/songwriter vibe of “Take Your Mama”, “Mary” being a loving tribute to every classic power ballad written, etc). The band’s stellar performance brings forth the final special touch. In particular Jake Shears’ performance here, both vocally and sometimes even lyrically, really brings to mind how he’s probably one of the best frontmen of his generation, even if just for one album.
When the S/T got big back in its day, it felt like one of those moments where the mainstream market got it, that a band who deserved success actually reached it: even back then I was positively surprised when something I really loved suddenly became big everywhere (insert your favourite token “I liked it before it was cool” phrase here). A decade+ later when the band’s public presence is at its minimum, listening to the debut now just confirms that it wasn’t your usual kind of trend-following pedestal-raising that happens time to time in public media to fairly unexciting acts. The material holds up excellently and in fact sounds completely fresh, and the album still feels like a gem that should be mentioned alongside the usual subjects in any sort of 00s retrospectives. It’s a brilliantly realised pop album that sounds like people poured their hard-worked sweat, tears and blood over it to make it the best damn thing they’d ever do. Sadly it turned out that’s just what they did but focusing on the downsides takes away from enjoying the positives and ultimately dampens the mood during the celebration. And despite its serious heart, that’s exactly what the Scissor Sisters debut feels like - a celebration of a band in their prime, their creative vein and their desire to be on top of the world.
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