SCISSOR SISTERS
"Don't Feel Like Dancing"
Had to let you in on this one, fellow babies. You may remember these glamour pusses if you eardrummed their 2004 debut, which you should have if you care about keeping gayness alive in pop music -- not for the P.C. angel points but for the sheer mascara-spattered, fuck-yer-fuckholeness of it, New York Dolls, remember those girls? -- or about bass-popping, piano-comping mashups of young Elton, high Roxy, middle Gibb, and maybe some sugar-blasted ELO while we're at it. A sheer heart attack, that album, especially "Laura" and "Take Your Mama" (to the gay bar!).

And so, teasing and tarting for upcoming Album II, is the first single, already out in the UK but unavailable in the US until August 15 (whatever you say, record company). Recently leaked, or spurted, onto the nefarious, rapacious, all-consuming www, this is a hot shot of Mondo Disco Wacko. Piano, bass, falsetto, skinny golden synthesizer plumes shooting limpid jets o' love. It's more than beat and Studio 54 atmosphere, though. The chord progressions are witty and surprising, the whole is ironic yet undeniable: the '70s in aspic, but the aspic throbs and tastes like banana-grape bubblegum.

So it's not a radical advance over the debut, but these campers don't care about the Eno aspect of classic glam. They don't care to paint soundscapes or chill out the Ritalyn generation like Radiohead. They just wanna fuck. Oh, and dance. (That title is not to be trusted.)

And yes, like many of you, I went around saying "disco sucks" back in the day. Some of it did. But this isn't disco. It's -- something else . . .