Jake Shears - Jake Shears Words Nick Levine
Hearing Jake Shears’ voice again is a familiar thrill. The Scissor Sisters frontman kept a pretty low profile after the band went on indefinite hiatus in 2012, but he’s re-emerged this year with a Broadway role in Kinky Boots and the release of brilliant memoir Boys Keep Swinging. Now comes this debut solo album recorded the old-fashioned way down in Kentucky and New Orleans. “If it sounds expensive, that’s because it was,” Shears said recently. “This is the sound of actual human beings, playing real instruments onto tape.”
It’s also the sound of a man coming to terms with a break-up (Shears and his long-term partner split in 2015). Though Big Bushy Mustache really is a celebration of letting your upper lip get hairy – “You got what you need to set your follicles free,” Shears tells us boys – many of these songs are laced with heartbreak. Sad Song Backwards may sound like the country-fried cousin to classic Scissors hit I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’, but its lyrics actually deal with suicidal feelings.
Shears also shows his vulnerable side on the dreamy ballads Everything I’ll Ever Need and All for What, while stomping lead single Creep City features some intriguing lyrics which could leave his ex’s ears burning. “Funny no one wondered whose thumb I was under,” Shears sings not-quite-cryptically. Only The Bruiser, a brooding ballad which meanders over five-and-a-half minutes, doesn’t quite hit the spot; its cool electro pulse doesn’t fit neatly on an album that’s packed with Southern warmth.
But Shears is simply too irrepressible to stay down for long, which means the album also has lots of glitzy rock swaer. S.O.B. stands for sex on the brain and acknowledges that sometimes a bang is the best therapy. On the Bowiereferencing party anthem Good Friends, Shears thanks his pals for “making my blue days better with bad wine”. And Elton-esque closing track Mississippi Delta (I’m Your Man) sees Shears regain his confidence. “New York may destroy me, L.A. might ignore me, but the Londoners are swell and seem like they adore me,” he sings sweetly.
It all adds up to an emotionally resonant and terrifically entertaining album from an artist you’ve probably missed without realising it. Jake Shears, it’s great to have you back.