For people like me, for whom there is no greater pleasure than discovering and pointing out references, the more contrived the better, to other bands in every new album they buy, this debut offering by the Scissor Sisters is manna from heaven. Am I the only one who can hear Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel's "Mr. Soft" filtering through the Prince-meets-Macy Gray funk stomp of opening track "Laura"? Please say yes. The way the Scissor Sisters mix and match their influences plays dangerous games with taste but it works like a charm and it's awesome. The Rolling Stones and the Bee Gees rub shoulders in "Take Your Mama" and their cover of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" pointedly references Frankie Goes To Hollywood. And that's just the first three tracks. By the time I was slapped round the face with Elton John's wet cock in "Mary" I'd given up taking notes. They wear their influences so openly that they're barely worth mentioning, and there's so much else going on inside this shiny disc that it would take a team of dedicated music nerds about a hundred years to analyse all the fun out of it.

The best track here, the anthemic "Tits On The Radio", is the sound of two hundred people stripping naked beneath a giant glitterball made of rubies, emeralds and sapphires and from there the party just gets hotter, harder, sweatier, dirtier and better. Infectious danceability runs through the album like chicken flu through Asia and by the time the freaky bad-trip, prog rock epic power ballad "Return To Oz" reaches its climax, it's five in the morning and you're waking up with a splitting headache in a dirty love hotel with a half naked transvestite sprawled unconscious across your legs and mysterious scratch marks across your chest. If you're lucky enough to have picked up this UK special edition then the next thing that happens is that you see a half-full bottle of Jack Daniels and some cheap mascara on the bedside table and start the party all over again to the soundtrack of two equally sexy and dancetastic bonus tracks, both of which sound like Duran Duran. -Ian Martin, Feb.17.04

Scissor Sisters