The bewitching hour...

None of this new Scissor Sisters BUMPF is really blowing our mind
but it's nice enough so we'll continue as if it is. Here is the album cover for Magic Hour, their fourth 'opus'. It features zebras. Zebras are lovely. These zebras look pensive and/or suicidal. Maybe they've been hypnotised by the reflective sphere.

Here is a tracklisting for said album:

1. "Baby Come Home"
2. "Keep Your Shoes On"
3. "Inevitable"
4. "Only The Horses"
5. "Year of Living Dangerously"
6. "Let’s Have a Kiki"
7. "Shady Love"
8. "San Luis Obispo"
9. "Self Control"
10. "Best in Me"
11. "The Secret Life of Letters"
12. "Somewhere"
13. "Ms. Matronic’s Magic Message"

Bonus Tracks

1. "F*** Yeah"
2. "Let’s Have a Kiki (DJ Nita Remix)"
3. "F*** Yeah (Seamus Haji Remix)"

"Year of Living Dangerously" is an amazing name for a pop song, as is "The Secret Life of Letters". "Let's Have a Kiki" is presumably either about a cocktail named after Our Beloved Saint Kirsten of Dunst or the drag queen slang word for... what's it slang for again? We can't remember.

Here's what the Scissor Sisters' album covers look like, chronologically:



And as if that wasn't enough, click below the CUT/JUMP/ROPE/ON THE FOLLOWING LINK
to view the new Scissor Sisters video, for "Only The Horses". It's not very interesting and doesn't say anything profound, but you get to listen to the song and see some pretty horses running in slow motion. So there's that.

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Laverly.

In slightly unexpected but not completely bonkers collaboration news: this is the new Scissor Sisters single and it's produced by blokey house-pop whizz Calvin of the Harris. It's really quite good, we like it a lot, we think you might like it too. Just a hunch.

A REALLY GOOD Scissor Sisters song

We're not particularly massive Scissor Sisters fans - their 'unique' brand of crudely camp pop never brushed us up the right way and we're convinced Jake Shears' falsetto is employed as a high-level torture device at Guantanomo. HOWEVER we're big on second/third/fourth/eighth chances so we always give their new stuff a fair listen. This song 1) features buzz rapper of the moment Azealia Banks under the name 'Krystal Pepsy', 2) contains the lyric "she likes to dance with Madonna" and 3) is not by any means shit. Fingers crossed they can give us an album as good.

(PS this video is here)

Nightmare on Castro Street

This is one of the best tracks of the year - all brooding, swirling, hedonistic synths. Dark, beguiling etc. etc. etc. Not quite the video we would have imagined/directed/envisioned, but bizarre and intoxicating nonetheless.

Definitely the first time we've seen a dirty protest type situation appear in the music video for a band big enough to fill the O2, that's for sure.

Someone might want to tell Lord Jake of Shears that his nipples are poking out of that slitted number...

Yes we just wrote 'slitted number'. You know, this is the kind of gimmicky, LOLZ INNUENDOS & HIGHJINKS music video we would find irritating from anyone else. But it's the Scissor Sisters! Plus, Ana Matronic's face during her spoken-word bridge is so sparky and 'fiery' we practically incinerated ourselves watching it.

Stuck In Our Head: "Sex and Violence" - Scissor Sisters

Words like 'fabulous' and 'fierce' are thrown about so carelessly that they've all but lost their meaning, but if you were to apply them to some of the stuff from the new Scissor Sisters album you'd be using them correctly and accurately and we'd have to give you a gold star.

Needs more glitter.

So the Scissor Sisters are doing disco and butts for their next album campaign but unfortunately this video, for lead single "Fire With Fire", is visually on a par with the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling". So not all that exciting.

Fire with apparent fire (we'll be the judge of that etc. etc. etc.)

You can listen to a clip of the new Scissor Sisters single, "Fire with Fire" here. We're not sure we're entirely sold on it. It's a bit cheesey-easy-listening-stadium-hit. Did Snow Patrol write this? No but all rudeness aside, it's not awful which is always something to be thankful for. Small mercies, and all that. We were hoping for similar dark disco to the previously unleashed album closer "Invisible Light" but oh well. Ho hum. Let's hope the album is a mine full of gems.

Well this was unexpected...

The Scissor Sisters are the sort of band that really should be amongst our favourites. They're glittery, gay, intelligent, camp, fabulous, rude, sexy and inventive. But, y'know, somewhere it all just got lost in translation? It's one of those 'in theory but not in practise' things, we feel. They're a wonderful concept, but their music falls a little too far into 'cheesey unironic chartpop' territory on occasion for us to have ever really committed to fandom. Nevertheless we still admire from a distance.

Well this, above, is a sneak preview album track (featuring Sir Ian McKellan, NO JOKE) called "Invisible Light" from their third official studio album, Night Work. The artwork's very nifty and well-conceived 80s throwback. According to Popjustice it's a Mapplethorpe photo - nice! As for the song, it's a lot more fantastical and unselfconscious than anything we've heard from them before, and we love it!

Clickies and enjoy, and check out their website for more info.