EMPIRE OF THE SUN Walking On A Dream (EMI)
The Scissor Sisters are back. Yes, it’s official. They’ve bought Christian Lacroix military jackets and grown sick moustaches for the occasion. They even went and robbed a tinsel warehouse and swiped the pupil out of Sauron’s eye for good measure.
No, seriously, take another look at that album cover. That thing has frickin’ Lions, Elephants, Hong Kong, and Shanghai in the same collage.
Synthesized squeals, blips and squeaky voices — a little too familiar perhaps? Empire Of The Sun’s parallels with the, er, queens of New York disco don’t end there. Right down to the falsetto whoo-hoo-hoo-hoohoo-hoohoos on Country, this is exactly what the Scissor Sisters would sound like if they made it beyond 2006’s Ta-Dah.
That being said, the albums musical cues — however trippy they may be — groove to a less zippy pace. It’s a bit of a stretch to wrap your head around EOTS’s sound. It’s a bit of Bowie solace, injected with a mild dose of 80s hair metal pomp, delivered with the suppressed glee of a shaggy-haired folk rocker’s first trip to Glastonbury. You half expect it to build up to a crescendo, only to find yourself hanging when it stubbornly floats on at terminal altitude.
I’m sitting on the fence with this one: I like the concept, but I’m not too eager to declare that the duo’s got the sound they’re shooting for locked down just yet.
Check Out Empire Of The Sun Myspace page.
P.S. there’re a few tight EOTS remixes floating around on the web right now. It seems like their sound is pretty conducive to House and Electro mixes. Here’s one by Button Masher: Download
(Sherwin Tay)
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