Well, only another year or so, and you should be sold on Filthy/Gorgeous.
In the meantime, I've been reviewing Scissor Sisters the album...
(Cut 'n' pasted from elsewhere.)
Various Sisters (most memorably Babydaddy) have talked, in interviews, about how the album has a thematic progression, an arc. It's also notable that the likes of Electrobix were omitted, presumably because they'd disrupt this arc.
Initially, I thought this was bollocks - largely because the album seemed so chock-full of excellent songs that it seemed more like a Greatest Hits collection than a (dare I say the c-word) concept album. The more I listen to it, however, the more I realise there really is an overarching theme to Scissor Sisters. Not necessarily a particularly explicit or watertight progression, but certainly a progression in terms of mood and atmosphere.
I see the album as comprising three separate moods - or, being just sli-i-ightly pretentious, three movements. The all-encompassing theme/arc is The Gay (Male) Experience or, at least, the (American-flavoured) fairytale of growing up gay somewhere in the sticks, feeling alone, coming out, moving to the city and (if you're unlucky) being swallowed up and spat out by the voracious gay scene.
As I see it, the first three or four songs are redolent of those early times, when one is feeling one's way in terms of sexual exploration. Laura is double-edged, the tale of a manipulative, unequal male-female relationship that's not-quite-right on several levels. There's a sense of the male singer/narrator being (emotionally/sexually/socially?) smothered by Laura, and feeling quite angry about it.
In the early stages of gay male self-exploration, women feature majorly. I remember having a female best friend, and all the first people I 'came out' to were female. It strikes me that Laura is the story of someone making a half-hearted attempt to either be straight or find a female friend with whom to check out the gay scene.
By contrast, Mary seems more self-assured. It's another account of male-female intimacy, but the balance has tipped and the relationship is more equal; in terms of power, the singer/narrator and Mary are on a par. The relationship feels less bitter, more sincere and heartfelt. The singer doesn't need a fag-hag (and yeah yeah yeah, it's a horrible term, but y'all know what I mean) anymore; he loves Mary for deeper reasons.
Take Your Mama is deliriously upbeat, marking a very special defining point in the Gay Experience: 'coming out' to one's parents (or, at least, one's mother). This must be a near-universal phenomenon among gay people: we've all had to confront it (or make the considered decision to avoid confronting it) at some point.
Comfortably Numb doesn't necessarily fit within the theme - possibly because it's a cover. It was originally about heroin use, but the Sisters' version (particularly with sexy disco-jellyfish) seems more about the process of becoming inebriated/drugged - possibly for the first time. Which fits, I guess, with the idea of hitting the gay scene running, and immersing oneself wholeheartedly in it, drugs and all.
The next four songs - Lovers In The Backseat, Tits On The Radio, Filthy/Gorgeous and Music Is The Victim are about music, sex and lifestyle - ideally, combining all three. The themes are cruising, censorship, and joyous celebration of sex and sexuality (filth/gorgeousness) in full-on out-of-yer-face, tits-oot-for-the-lads dancing). It's a powerful evocation of the gay scene at its best, a seeming-endless panoply of giddily-diverting drugs, drink, dancing and delicious casual sex. If we're pushing my Gay Experience metaphor, this'd be the middle period, when one has come out to one's parents, re-evaluated one's relationships with women (as one decides to publicly identify as gay) and thrown oneself headlong into the scene.
The final three songs (and my analysis doesn't include The Skins and Get It Get It which seem like pleasant add-ons) signal a change of mood - a yearning, a disillusionment. Better Luck chronicles a failed relationship, albeit with no hard feelings. It Can't Come Quickly Enough, with its wonderfully Pet Shop Boysish title and refrain, seems to yearn for love to come quickly (surely the elegiac response to Pet Shop Boys' second hit?). It's as if there's a realisation here that the gay scene, while fabulous, hasn't and won't provide true love. A sudden chill wind amid the orgy of drug-fuelled fuckerooney.
The chill continues and intensifies with Return To Oz, an extended metaphor for the destructive influence of crystal meth, but also (in its fantasy-shattering title) a downbeat conclusion: as well as failing to provide love, the gay scene is replete with its dangers, false turns and unhappy endings. Return To Oz paints a melancholy picture of a devastated, fragmented gay community - the Gay Experience at a rather bitter (or bittersweet) end.
Three separate phases: exploration, hedonism and disillusionment. The Gay Experience writ large.
What d'you reckon? |
