MONDOmagazine

Scissor Sisters
at the Namba Hatch in Osaka, Japan
Monday, January 29th

By Andrew Nicholas McCann Smith

I couldn’t help but think that the Scissor Sisters got a little ahead of themselves in tackling a one-and-a-half-hour show, with no opening band, in a venue as awkward as the Namba Hatch (on the 3rd floor of a cylindrical building). The room itself looked like a space ship imagined by McDonald’s: with room for 350, it’s one of the larger mid-size venues in Osaka – but with the added capacity comes more responsibility, and the Scissor Sisters aren’t a responsible band. It would be great for housing an intimate show with a skilled major act, but not a still-growing group like the Sisters.

It is always embarrassing watching a band go through puberty. What is it about the temperamental performance, the jarring song structure, and the fumbling for identity that makes it so painful? I’m not sure if they’ve just lost their footing with the release of 2006’s Ta-dah, but the Scissor Sisters seemed to be going through this adjustment period in force.

The Scissor Sisters took stage at 7:30pm, and I was wowed at first: it felt just like a Vegas stage show! The curtains swung open and singer Jake Shears came out tap-dancing, in a pinstriped suit and gorgeous hair, with his long legs cutting across the stage. Singer Ana Matronic was stuffed into a dreadful blue superhero dress, while guitarist Del Marquis was in a tight bodysuit – all the rage in Japan two years ago. Their energy lasted through quite a few disco tunes, Bee-Gees knock-offs, and their amazing singles like “Take Your Mama Out.” With such an eclectic mix of fun numbers, even the Japanese were dancing.

But within a few songs, as the banter began, they became sweaty (boy, did Shears’ hair go sour) and the novelty of their theatrics wore off. Matronic gabbed our ears off about the sex trade in Japan, and Shears made a cheap shot at politics, introducing “Laura” by dedicating it to “the First Lady, that bitch, Laura Bush.”

The worst moment of the concert had to be a power ballad that sounded like it was stolen from David Bowie’s Transformer. Shears walked to the edge of the stage, stood over the audience, and began tracing his palm in the air. Were this a movie, and I a boy searching for meaning and identity, I would have placed my hand in the air and traced with him, from afar. This would have been revolutionary and I would have discovered who I truly was. Instead I found myself… bored. Essentially, that piece sunk the night. From there on out, the Elton John homages began to drag, they stopped playing disco, and the audience returned to stone.

Perhaps the flamboyancy of gay art was merely a growing pain, in the same way that raves were to electronic music. When a kitsch band like the Scissor Sisters can’t pull off their theatrical stunts, perhaps it’s a sign that gay art has evolved past being a mix-tape of queer influence and is finally able to innovate with sophistication, like Antony and the Johnsons and Xiu Xiu, instead of plain garishness.

Or perhaps the Scissor Sisters are still discovering hair growing in places it hadn’t before. (Wow, what a Carrie Bradshaw ending.)

Jarvis Cocker
Jarvis
Rough Trade, 2006

By Andrew Nicholas McCann Smith

He’s reinvented himself. Again. Not as Jarvis Cocker, just as Jarvis: always a ladies’ man, a dream fuck, and a pure fashionista — the haute couture of metrosexuality, before it was butchered by blokes with feelings and yuppies in pink button-ups. Since his Pulp days, Jarvis has taken a half-decade to focus on other pursuits: directing music videos for Aphex Twin and Erlend Øye, releasing an album as Darren Spooner, throwing together a failed band, and getting hitched. Seeing Jarvis get married shocked me as much as if the Pope had announced “God is dead.” Common People was a tribute to how he could get any woman he wanted, how he refused to settle, how women were his toys. His warnings of infidelity won him more chicks! Jarvis was a man that every man wished he could be, in his designer suits and faggy style. Jarvis was my hero, but he’s changed a little now.

This new Jarvis is a bit older and a bit wiser. He’s not so sex-driven, and a tad more serious, on first glance. Like any debut diva rock album, Jarvis has just enough synth to make it contemporary, but not enough to steer away from rock. The range of styles shows he’s attempting to diversify — to really make himself out as a singer. Tragically, this collection of songs seems more of an attempt to actually say something, but at least he says it with cynicism. Jarvis touches on religion (“It’s the true believers who crash and burn”), sex (“Sex is for dummies anyway, for when you’ve run out of things to say”), even economy (“The free market is perfectly natural / Do you think that I’m some kind of dummy?”). And he throws in “dummy” whenever he can.

Were this a record by someone a little more serious, and a little less sexy, I would have sloughed it off as another attempt to convey meaning in vagueness, like Radiohead. Thankfully, after all the politics, Jarvis simply declares: “Shit floats.” It seems so fatalistic to hear a whole album about the horror stories of the everyday and then get shot down with: “Use your right to protest on the streets / Use your right, but don’t imagine it’s heard.”

The construction of the album is as eccentric as Jarvis’s lyrics. The prereleased single, “Cunts are Still Running the World” (titled as “Running the World” on the album, but I won’t be tricked), is tagged onto the CD 30 minutes after “Quantum Theory”, as a bonus track. In the LP version of Jarvis it doesn’t even fall on the vinyl — it’s included as a separate 7”. But, because he’s just so deliciously English, it’s easy to accept the album for its style: sensual stories told with compelling wording. The ballad “I Will Kill Again” is one of the many songs written with that kind of emotion. When his voice cracks ever-so-slightly while singing it, you can tell he’s straining for breath – that maybe he actually worked for this album.

The literary side of Jarvis has surfaced before — like the time he walked onto the English show TGF, pushed a cardboard cutout of himself out the window, sat down, and referenced Oscar Wilde. When asked why he pushed himself out the window he claimed: “To let something new grow in its place.” So after his mid-life crisis reinvention process, Jarvis has come out the other end older and married, and apparently wiser for it.

Xiu Xiu
La Foret
5 Rue Christine, 2005

By Andrew Nicholas McCann Smith

Xiu Xiu is one of the few fag bands around. The others remaining in the endangered species list are Peaches, Antony & The Johnsons, and The Hidden Cameras. Since emo took hold, male hipsters have become effeminate, metro, bi, and asexual: these hipster males are no longer aggressive mate-seekers and concert-goers. Blatant fag bands have become the reaction to this popular effeminacy. Xiu Xiu, a changing band under the direction of Jamie Stewart, has been at the forefront of the fag music movement since they began releasing shock albums such as Knife Play and A Promise, which features a naked Asian man on the cover holding a baby-doll to his genitals. Xiu Xiu’s genius seems to be the blend of touchingly sentimental shock lyrics and experimental recording techniques. Everything on a good Xiu Xiu album becomes blatant: from lyrics about dismembering parents and oral sex to hyperaware production of thick synthesizers and big percussion crashes.

La Foret is probably the tamest of their releases; it seems to lack the imagination and brilliance of earlier albums, like Fabulous Muscles from a year ago. The songs are not nearly as daring, and I swear there are moments where Stewart just copies sections of Fabulous Muscles. For instance, “Muppet Face” on La Foret maintains an almost identical chorus to “Crank Heart” on Fabulous Muscles. La Foret does succeed, in a kind of psychological closeness never quite felt in his earlier works. Knife Play was heavily distanced and character-driven; Fabulous Muscles was much more about the dynamics of a relationship. La Foret is an album of intimate pillow-talk and minor eruptions between a close couple. It begins with a sparse guitar and Stewart singing in his wispy voice. A xylophone enters with a cello. The melody is slow; harmonies are sparse; the song ends with a metallic crack of the xylophone. Thankfully, the production on this album is gorgeous: simple, effective, and clear. Other songs, like “Ale”, have just clarinets, vocals, and a bit of background noise.

Though La Foret is not shocking, its sincerity won me over quickly. Xiu Xiu’s sweet straining voice has left me listening to this album over and over — a strong release of 2005.