All of a sudden, Scissor Sisters are on the cutting edge
With its disco-burlesque building a buzz, quintet is looking sharp
The Scissor Sisters are on the phone from Switzerland, where they've recently performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival. The New York City quintet straddles a bunch of styles -- vintage '70s pop, hedonistic disco, and hopped-up burlesque, for starters -- but jazz isn't one of them. Korn and ZZ Top played at Montreux this year, too, which makes Babydaddy (the multi-instrumentalist Sister who's holding the phone while singer Jake Shears shouts unsolicited answers from across the hotel room) feel slightly less out of place.
On the other hand, out of place feels strangely right to the Scissor Sisters, who sprouted from the fringes of the downtown performance and electroclash scenes and are enjoying a suddenly brilliant career moment built on a delicious mess of contradictions.
Among the fascinating biographical tidbits: The group's name is slang for a lesbian sex act, but there are no lesbians in the Scissor Sisters, Babydaddy explains, just a few gay men and a drag queen trapped in a woman's body. The Sisters are a cutting-edge project with deep roots in Kentucky, where Babydaddy, who produced the album, grew up. They made a minor splash stateside late last year and promptly screamed to the top of the UK charts -- where their eponymous debut album is No. 1 -- with a giddy, tarted-up cover of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" that sounds like the Bee Gees on ecstasy. The track infuriated classic-rock devotees and delighted Roger Waters and David Gilmour, who requested copies. Among the group's other celebrity fans is Elton John, who bought 50 copies of the Scissor Sisters' disc to give as gifts and invited the band to join him for a series of shows -- the first opening act John has had in nine years.
"We all listened to a lot of radio growing up," says Babydaddy. "For me it was Billy Joel and Chicago on family road trips. For Jake it was Billy Joel and David Bowie. We all loved Floyd. Jake was on his parents' farm in Virginia singing the Floyd song in the barn when he got the idea to give it a try."
It's very hard to picture these people in barns. Onstage, the Scissor Sisters, who open for the B-52's at Campanelli Stadium in Brockton on Thursday, wear things like pirate outfits and sequined eye patches, feather boas and impossible boots, extravagant headgear and items that magically combine fur and mesh. Given names are considered a bore.
Shears used to be a go-go dancer and Babydaddy was working in film production when the pair began playing arty clubs as a duo in 1999. They wrote a song called "Bicycle of the Devil," which Babydaddy describes as Cher meets Sisters of Mercy, and an electronic aerobics concept number that addresses the issue of poor body image among gay men. One night they met Ana Matronic at a Halloween party. Matronic, who worked in a law firm by day and hosted decadent cabaret parties on the Lower East Side by night, was dressed as a Warhol Factory reject, and it was clear that the pair had to become a trio. Soon after, they added Del Marquis on guitar, then Paddy Boom on drums.
"It's happened pretty inorganically," says Babydaddy with novel candor. "The image still isn't fully there. Visuals are important; it's like theater. You write songs and put on a show. We love the idea of putting on a show. We think of it in terms of history and our influences and passing on a torch. But it's just lazy to call us a fashion band. We put our heart into the album and we can only go out and do what we do, and if people want to give our songs a chance they will."
Babydaddy and the rest are still smarting from a few indiscreet comparisons to the Village People, whom he dismisses as a bar mitzvah band, and Frankie Goes to Hollywood, which is just stupid. But the fact is, it was the style press in England that first fell for and championed the Scissor Sisters; adoring music fans followed shortly. Buzz is now building in the United States, which tends to be more resistant, if not downright oblivious, to campy retro music acts. VH1 recently welcomed the Scissor Sisters into heavy rotation. Babydaddy's daddy, a doctor, is on the band's message board every day, fanning the flames. Elton John -- who apparently follows these things -- makes a point of telling them how many radio adds they get in a given week.
"Things seem to be starting here, little by little," says Babydaddy, who confirms that the Scissor Sisters are going to be recording with Kylie Minogue before quickly taking it back. "Oh. I guess I'm supposed to say `no comment.' " Babydaddy's hand is over the phone but you can hear him fighting with Shears. Babydaddy accuses him of being drunk. "We have little spats all the time," he continues. "We're a family."
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.
