There's something about the kitchen-sink approach to music that makes me suspicious. Excessive genre-hopping or wearing stylistic flexibility as a badge is often considered honorable or even proof of an artist's restless, boundless talent. Yet when this approach is put under a microscope, the choice to aim for a variety of different sounds often seems like a mask for artists unable to do any one thing particularly well.
A lot of the initial praise garnered by Scissor Sisters stemmed from their oscillation between what many consider to be disparate styles: To be reductive, those are rollicking early 70s Elton John-esque pop songs and buoyant disco. However, on their self-titled debut, Scissor Sisters not only do quite a few genres justice-- not least of which is witty, irreverent pop songs-- but both their idiosyncratic approach to music and their sensibilities seem to have common roots in glam-era rock or Philly soul.
On the face of it, that's an odd blend. Unless you're Ryan Adams, Homer Simpson, or those bearded fellows in Kings of Leon, you aren't likely of the mindset that rock achieved perfection in 1974. But the Sisters embrace the playfulness and panache of that era's artists-- from Sparks and Elton, to 10cc and Mott the Hoople, to The Spinners and, um, Pink Floyd-- and come out smelling like roses. Here, the Sisters skip smartly through glam's linear history, and stray far enough from the beaten path to discover a sound of their own, all while resisting the sacrifice of context for pantomime.
With one part arched eyebrows and droll wit, and one part melancholia and sharp social observation, the Sisters' debut is bursting with golden moments. To the disappointment of some, large portions of the Scissor Sisters' highly circulated and heavily dancefloor-leaning demo has been either re-recorded or exorcised from the final cut, but the retail version outstrips the demo by a mile. "Doctor (I'm Only Seeing Dark)", "Backwoods", and "Bicycling with the Devil" in particular are missed, but with their inclusion, the finished product would likely have been a far more schizophrenic affair.
Instead, the Sisters' debut hangs together well, despite sounding at times more like a career-spanning singles compilation than a cohesive work. (Although, in this MP3 era, where's the harm in that?) Debut single "Laura", with its overflow of rollicking piano and wah-wah guitar, is the hyper-jovial opener. Break-up song "Better Luck" and the falsetto-drenched disco cover of "Comfortably Numb" (what might have been had Pink Floyd followed their classic rock contemporaries into late 70s disco tourism) are the dancing-with-tears-in-your-eyes tracks. "Tits on the Radio" is New York's best protest dance song since !!!, and "Lovers in the Backseat" is a gold lamé-draped take on voyeurism. "Mary" and "It Can't Come Quickly Enough", meanwhile, are the 4 a.m. ballads, contenders for the night's penultimate spin before "Last Dance" soundtracks the queue at the coat check.
Best of all are "Take Your Mama" and "Return to Oz". The former is a clever Primal Scream-meets-"Freedom '90" suggestion to come out to your mother during a night on the town. The latter is a weary, hungover ballad lamenting the influence of crystal meth on the gay nightclub scene ("What once was Emerald City's/ Now a crystal town"). In combination, those two tracks delightfully reveal that under Scissor Sisters' sheen of fabulousness and irresistible hooks beats a heart that breaks as easily as it bursts, and that's a sort of versatility that can't be easily concocted.
