Scissor Sisters - Baby Come Home: Music Video Review

Scissor Sisters don't make beer but if they did it would be the most hallucination-inducingly camp beer in world. Warning: may cause drinker to see candy coloured rabbits and dancing nuns... Ah the shy, demure, wallflower world of the Scissor Sisters. If you were to compare them to a member of your family they would be your retiring Grandparents wouldn't they? I can see them sat in their tourbus knitting little knick-knacks for the younger members of the family, sipping tea from Royal Daulton cup and saucer sets passed down from their own grandmothers, occasionally glancing through the blinds and sighing at what the world used to be like. Jake Shears complete with cane and bifocals would complain to Granny Ana Matronic about the new host on Cash in the Attic whilst she turns her hearing aid down and fetches some malt loaf from the cupboard. Of course, there's also a word known to some mortals as sarcasm and i'd like to enforce that on everything that's just been said. Scissor Sisters are not, I repeat, not like your Grandparents - their name is based on a lesbian sex position for goodness sake. Can you place those two images together? Quick get the thought out of your mind before it's mentally burned onto your retinas forever. Baby Come Home is the successor to Only The Horses, which was actually quite a demure affair for the Sisters. No nudity. No gyrating. No crazy green screen/CGI face pulling. Just some horses and some paint. Stylish - yes, interesting - meh, not so much. This is all very deja vu with the last album campaign really: Fire with Fire was lead single with a fairly simple video concept, just the band on a travelling float really. Not even a glitzy, legs akimbo float. That got to number 11 in the charts before Any Which Way came storming in with a video full of colours, sushi explosions, running through glass, dancing in day-glo PVC - the works. Sadly that didn't even make top 75 and follow-up Invisible Light (the best song on the Night Work album with the most barmy, amazing video) couldn't make it top 150. Stripped back isn't the most successful action plan for Scissor Sisters unless it means actually getting naked. Has Only The Horses done the damage already? Will this video be a return to the camp highs of previous endeavours? Does any of it matter? Opening, let me set the scene for you. An empty kitchen/living room open plan kinda place. Two bottles of beer on the table alongside keys and phone. It's daylight outside. Going to work perhaps, just got in from an early morning shift maybe. The bottle facing camera reads Scissor Sisters in a typeface that will get Budweiser very upset (it's like own brand coke packaging in poundland that looks extremely similar to Coca-Cola). As we zoom in to the words, oooohs from the heavens begin and the Scissor Leg logo begins to bop about. As we fly right into the ambiguously gendered logo's crotch, the madness ensues. Is that.... Could it be.... Jake Shears dressed as a nun? Mind. Explodes. http://youtu.be/lM2d28lBM3k Now if you just watched what I watched then, no. No, you weren't slipped hallucinogenic drugs in your morning coffee. Yes that really just happened. The Scissor Sisters have gone for a beer-addled pantomine fest of crazy and it is a delight in all it's derangement. Here be the stages of drunkeness afoot - first up let's stick to religion with some thrusting Jake nuns, a holy Ana-Nun and Babydaddy the monk (who worships ale by the looks of that holy goblet). Next stop is the realms of history complete with angry Del Marquis aka Zeus (having been to weightwatchers), beer jousting knights putting the bottle in the mug (EUPHEMISM) and a slightly scared looking viking who pillaged the Monk's heady broth. Now things start going a little strange with sailors, tidal waves, ghosts burning a witchy (but very foxy) Ana Matronic at the stake, head morphing and cattle prodding in the steam room. Fantasies? Nope it's nightmare land aka towel draped devil and the fiery rotating (slightly cardboard in appearance) pits of hell. What terrors are lurking there you ask? A singing pink bunny apparently. The height of all evil. Oh and a bunny hugpile or at least I think that's what they're doing. Like any good musical number in any good musical, you've got to end it with a bang. How about bringing the whole cast on for a final hurrah? Yes, why don't we do that. Very good. Never have my eyes been so visually blinded by an array of clashing colours and fancy dress characters mugging off at cartoons and I doubt anyone's going to nab that crown off the Sisters anytime soon. What can I say but that I love this song, it's definitely one of the best off the new album, Magic Hour, which, in all honesty, is not their highest point. The video, though low budget, is tons of fun filled with lots of things to pick up on on multiple viewings (the playing cards that turn from Queen to Jack for example). If only this had been the lead single is the thought running through my mind as I can't see it being very successful after the meh-fest of Only the Horses. Long gone are the days where something as outrageously brilliant as Filthy/Gorgeous could be found lodged in the top 5 and sadly, it's going to take a lot to claw back this era from the brink of obscurity. Right, back to my Scissor Sisters own brew - just ignore me if I mention a chorus of bemused pink bunnies...