No lesser an authority than Bono has called them “the best pop group in the world”, and their first three albums sold millions - 4.5 million in the United Kingdom alone - making them a household name everywhere from America, Japan and Australia to the UK, which they call their “spiritual home”. They have collaborated with artists as varied as Santigold, 2 Bears, Kylie Minogue, and their global success, eclectic dance-pop-rock sound and wild New York club style can be said to have paved the way for Lady Gaga. They are Scissor Sisters, and their songs have soundtracked this century like few other acts.
As for their albums, in an era when the long-playing record has been said to be under threat, they are exceptions to the rule, endlessly playable from end to end, the proverbial “all killer, no filler”. Their self-titled debut from 2004 set the gold (platinum, actually) standard, becoming the biggest-selling album of the year in the UK and proving that stylistic promiscuity need not be a barrier to mass acceptance. The follow-up, Ta-Dah (2006), was another chart-topper in the UK and their first US Billboard Top 20 chart entry. It included I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’, a number 1 single in nearly a dozen countries from Argentina to Australia, as well as She’s My Man, Land Of A Thousand Words and I Can’t Decide, the latter used to striking effect in a memorable episode of British sci-fi TV programme Dr Who.
There was a four-year hiatus before their third album, Night Work (2010), but the lay-off hardly dented their popularity: it went Top 20 in the States and reached number 2 in the UK, a virtual club concept record bolstered by such excellent dancefloor smashes as Any Which Way and Sex And Violence.
And now the world’s best pop group are back with a fourth album, as supremely diverse as any they’ve ever done. Frontman Jake Shears tweeted on October 31, 2011 that the album was in its final stages, but it wasn’t until January 2012 that a song entitled Shady Love, featuring guest vocals from Azealia Banks, according to the NME the coolest person on the planet, and Jake under his pseudonym Krystal Pepsy, debuted on Annie Mac’s Radio 1 show.
On March 13, Scissor Sisters announced the title of the album - Magic Hour - with the first single revealed as Only The Horses. Those two tracks - the one a full-on hands-in-the-air rave-pop banger designed to sate crowds in Ibiza, the other an exuberant rap-pop number destined for New York clubland - give some idea of the eclectic delights you can expect from Magic Hour. It is the fourth great Scissor Sisters album.
“I can’t believe it’s our fourth record,” beams Jake Shears. “We’ve made four great albums now. Most bands don’t make it this far, and I’m really proud that we have.”
Jake describes Magic Hour as a “sweet, joyful mélange of beat-driven future-pop”, one that, he says, “style-hops all over the place unabashedly”. He explains that Magic Hour is the result of a series of team-ups between Scissor Sisters - himself, Babydaddy, Ana Matronic, Del Marquis and Randy Real - and a whole host of stellar artists, writers and producers, including Azealia, Calvin Harris, Stuart Price, Pharrell Williams, Diplo and Alex Rihda, the German electronic music producer and DJ behind BoysNoize.
“It was a pretty collaborative effort,” says Jake of Magic Hour, which was recorded in New York and London. “We made it really fast. We had a week in June 2011 when we wrote Only The Horses and a couple of other songs that didn’t make the album, then we started back at it at the beginning of September.”
The writing sessions were, he says, as “quick, easy and relaxed” as any he can remember, buoyed by the success of Scissors’ return after four years with Night Work.
“It felt really comfortable,” he says of early work on Magic Hour, for which they had no particular agenda. “We had a great summer and a great year behind us and we just wanted to make a record without over-thinking it or worrying about what it was or what it means.” He adds: “We haven’t made an album with so little angst since the first one. Sometimes when we record and write it can be very fraught with self-doubt, but this record wasn’t like that at all. It was fun.”
Magic Hour is, he says, an album about magic moments and magic friends. “This year has been very inspired by my friends,” he decides. “I had a really good time and met some amazing people - it changed my life. Muses are very important. You’ve got to have people in mind when you write a song. A lot of the songs on Magic Hour are specific messages to people in my life.”
While acknowledging that, as ever, Scissor Sisters are a group and everything they undertake is a group effort, he admits that, as principal lyricist, the songs can become vehicles for his thoughts and feelings, and the ones on Magic Hour are no exception.
“It’s a really personal album in that way,” he reveals. “All my favourite songs are those that really mean something to you. A lot of people were involved in the making of the record but a lot of it is about the last year of my life and where I’ve found myself as a grown man. I’ve had this strange thing over the last couple of years where I’ve looked in the mirror and realised I’m not a kid anymore, even though I behave like one...”
Comparing and contrasting Magic Hour with its predecessors, he says: “It’s really different to Night Work. That was almost a concept album - it was a singular world, and so was Ta-Dah. This one is a bit more of a grab-bag of music - it’s closest to our first record in terms of variety, and that board-game aspect where you’re not quite sure where you’re going to land next. It’s got tracks like San Luis Obispo next to Shady Love, which are so different, but I love those weird juxtapositions, and albums where the songs speak to each other. But there wasn’t any real concept this time, which is why I had a really hard time naming it.”
Jake admits to feeling far happier than he was five years ago, and that general sense of well-being is reflected in Magic Hour.
“I’ve not been as wound up, worried or stressed-out about things,” he says. “I’ve learned to let a lot of stuff roll off my back, and that’s made me a happier person. There’s no moodiness on Magic Hour. There’s The Year Of Living Dangerously, about taking risks and not caring what people think, but it’s not a dark record at all. Most of the songs have what I call a ‘sunrise’ feeling.”
Indeed, Jake considers Magic Hour to be a “very summer record”, one imbued with the spirit of Ibiza, the latter Spanish island providing the album with its title, after a particularly memorable early-morning magical moment on a rooftop watching the sun come up over the ocean with principal collaborator, Alex of BoysNoize.
“It was one of those memories I’ll never forget,” says Jake. “It was then I realised we were going to make something great.”
This biography was provided by the artist or their representative.
