Scissor Sisters [PA] (CD - 2004)

Personnel: Joan Wasser (violin); Crispin Cioe (saxophone); Paul Leschen (piano, organ, keyboards); Paddy Boom (drums).

Audio Mixers: Scissor Sisters; Neil Harris.

Recording information: 5D Studios, Brooklyn, NY; The Shed, New York, NY.

Photographer: Alan Clarke.

SCISSOR SISTERS is a case study in albums that are more than the sum of their parts. On paper, the group's combination of 1970s glam, disco, and pop brings to mind Elton John, Supertramp, and a really sweaty night at the disco with a particularly deft DJ on the turntables. In practice, however, the band uses their influences not so much to create a new style as to render up something eerily familiar that isn't quite identifiable. And while the sense of the familiar makes them immediately appealing, it is the unidentified other that keeps you listening.

A trio of dance-floor stompers opens the album, all thunderous bass lines, falsetto vocals, and wah-wah guitar straight out of SUPERFLY, but that's only the beginning. "T*ts on the Radio," is a snarling, swaggering attack on conservatism, recorded before the Janet Jackson/Superbowl debacle, but more relevant since that time. "Better Luck" highlights a gloriously thumping honky-tonk beat. And the closing tracks, both of which use sweeping ambient electronics, end the album on that majestic crash everyone experiences once they leave the heightened reality of a nightclub and return to the drab city streets. minimize