Photo credit: Damon Baker
Today Jake Shears has shared the remixes of latest single “Last Man Dancing”, courtesy of Hifi Sean. The track is the title track and emotional mission statement from Shears’ acclaimed recent album, the Scissor Sisters frontman’s highest charting solo release to date, marking Jake Shears’ welcome return to Pop.
An affecting tribute to keep moving, whatever life throws at you, “Last Man Dancing” is brilliantly reimagined by Hifi Sean, with the Cosmic Disco Mix and Cosmic Disco Dub transforming the soaring, Abba-esque anthem into a sweaty, Italo-inspired club banger. Hifi Sean, the seminal Soup Dragons vocalist turned DJ and producer, has previously collaborated with the likes of David McAlmont, Nile Rogers, and Crystal Waters.
Listen to the remixes: https://mute.ffm.to/jakeshears_remixes
The self-confessed Last Man Dancing, Jake Shears’ new album in many ways feels like the record he was born to make. Full of incandescent nods to dance music pioneers, a Sylvester falsetto here, a Patrick Cowley cowbell there and a Berghain pulse, Shears’ lifelong love affair with club culture breaks new ground while also sounding like a spiritual homecoming. This is nowhere more apparent than on “Voices”, which witnesses Jake’s much-anticipated creative reunion with Kylie Minogue over an Italo, dream-like siren “calling you to action…calling you to love.”
Those who RSVP to the Last Man Dancing party will quickly realize there is more going on than may first meet the eye. The record was introduced in immersive style earlier this year with the reborn disco groove of “Too Much Music”, and followed by “I Used To Be In Love”, a symphonic blast of house, hedonism and finding yourself right at home in a crowd of strangers. Like any great night out, things take a stranger turn: funk workout “Do The Television”, says Jake, “is about language and the loss of meaning, changing symbols and forgotten history”, while there’s a scathingly funny portrait of modern narcissism on the electro-clash of “Really Big Deal”. The record reaches its floor-filling crescendo on what Shears loosely calls “The Suite”: an instrumental-led mix (“Mess Of Me”, “Doses”, “Radio Eyes”) that sees the party reach almost dystopian depths in a room that also features the unlikely collective voices of Big Freedia, Jane Fonda, Iggy Pop and Amber Martin. Closing on the cinematic, breakbeat glam of “Diamonds Don’t Burn”, Last Man Dancing is ultimately a reminder to keep moving through whatever life throws at you, a theme rendered memorably through the title track’s video in which Jake earns his trophy not just as the “Last Man Dancing” but, without doubt, as one of this generation’s most trailblazing, positive pop stars.
This summer Jake Shears has carried Last Man Dancing out on the road, with sets ranging from Glastonbury, Mighty Hoopla and Pride to an intimate sold-out tour including London’s Village Underground. He also performed on live TV on Live With Kelly And Mark twice in NYC. With more to come from Last Man Dancing, he is currently working on other exciting projects to be unveiled very soon, continuing a polymathic career which has already taken Shears from an acclaimed memoir and Broadway show to his recent Olivier-Award-winning musical ‘Tammy Faye’. With work that still speaks evenly to the margins and the masses, Jake Shears’ pull to create has remained a constant, often the Last Man Dancing and always moving to his own beat.
JAKE SHEARS LIVE DATES:
8/25/2023 || Lincolnshire || Lost Village Festival (DJ Set)
8/27/2023 || Manchester || Pride
No comments:
Post a Comment