Review: Scissor Sisters – Night Work (2010)
Scissor Sisters have this shit down. After their uneven, sequin-bedecked debut and 2006′s more consistent but less energetic Ta-Dah!, Night Work finds them nailing a polyester bulls-eye. The loss of original drummer (and resident straight guy) Paddy Boom to an ‘amicable parting’ doesn’t seem to have affected the chemistry all that much, unless you regard the band’s enthusiastic journey into ever-gayer waters to be some sort of a change. But if this is telling you anything about Scissor Sisters that you couldn’t have gathered from the cover art, I’m not sure how else we can help you. As it is, ‘Whole New Way’ is probably the best song about rear entry you’re likely to hear this year.
If anything, the band sounds more comfortable here than they ever did on Ta-Dah!, as much fun as that album was. Rather than trying to tread the sexually ambiguous waters of mainstream acceptance, they’ve gone full-bore for the other team, and the resultant dozen songs are dazzlingly fun. Every beat, every cadence seems precision-calibrated to inspire booty-shaking. There’s nothing here you haven’t heard before from any number of 70s-80s number ones, but the genius of Night Work is in the pastiche. These guys (and girl) know exactly what to steal and how to tweak it for the biggest punch. You’ve got legions of afro-crowned background singers bedazzling the final chorus on ‘Night Work,’ a hilariously funky groove underpinning ‘Any Which Way,’ and pitch-perfect 80s ballads in ‘Fire With Fire’ and ‘Skin Tight.’ Just hearing this stuff, you can feel a forest of big hair and shoulder pads lurking just outside your vision. It’s brilliant.
Scissor Sisters’ “Any Which Way,” from Night Work.
It’s hard to tell which road the band will take after this. They could journey further into the mechanical dance beats of ‘Something Like This,’ or the transcendent electronica of ‘Invisible Light’. They’ve got a handle on funk and swagger, humor and emotion. There’s a fiendish competence on display with ballads, a total grasp of melody on pretty much everything they touch. Most importantly, there’s a real desire evident in the band to avoid repetition. Despite the fact that pretty much everything on Night Work is recycled from somewhere else, it’s somehow cleaner, clearer, and stronger than before, sounding entirely like Scissor Sisters yet without a single false moment or cheap do-over. It takes skill to tap the same vein three albums in a row and never sound like you’re running out of ideas, but Scissor Sisters have done it here, with style. I call it their strongest album yet. Pass me my cheetah-print leotard.
