For his comeback, the Scissor Sisters frontman travels back to the future of disco.
The beginning couldn’t be more classic: an electric piano floats through the reverberant space, a nervous flutter soars like a flock of birds, and finally the muscular beat sets in, the disco ball lights up and Jake Shears begins to sing, “Well, we finally made it to the promised land.” That this promised land is on a dance floor is not only clear from the title of LAST MAN DANCING, but also from the 12 tracks of this comeback by the Scissor Sisters frontman.
Amazingly successfully, Shears tries to recreate the summer of 2006, when the Sisters were the hottest pop band in the universe with “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin'” and queer culture was suddenly allowed to take over the mainstream as a matter of course. Only the melancholy that always resonated at that time has mostly given way to an almost blind trust in the all-healing power of a string arrangement from the synth.
“There can never be too much music for me,” sings the now 44-year-old Shears today, while the tracks produced by Boys Noize and others decline through the golden era of disco, sometimes in a boogie rhythm, sometimes as an Abba blend, sometimes with Kylie Minogue in a duet. Jake Shears is a classic himself, so he can sound classic.