I’ve always made stuff you can play at a party, but I’ve never made anything I could pull out at 1am if I was DJing in a club. “The second half is one big piece that’s all connected: all the songs move into each other and it grows in intensity,” the 44-year-old beams. It’s one of six “straight-up pop songs” on the 12-track LP before it then veers into a distillation of Shears’ longstanding love of nightlife hedonism, approaching the subject in a way that he hasn’t since Scissor Sisters’ cult 2010 nocturnal playground album ‘Night Work’. It opens with the Giorgio Moroder-like “disco fantasia” of ‘Too Much Music’, which sounds like vintage Scissor Sisters retooled for 2023 and is accompanied by a cinematic video that nods to both Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers. ‘Last Man Dancing’ is divided into two distinct halves. “My David Bowie altar gets lit up, the incense starts burning and everybody goes all night.” “I’ve got a dancefloor, and throw mostly impromptu dance parties that pull in all kinds of people,” he adds. There’s nothing chill whatsoever.”įeaturing production from Boys Noize and Vaughn Oliver (responsible for Latto’s ‘Big Energy’), it’s instead inspired by the lively and “joyful” parties Shears used to host at his New Orleans abode, which would start with sing-a-long pop hits and culminate with deeper house and tech cuts he’d spin himself between 4-6am. Nothing! It’s the first record I’ve made where there’s no ballads on it. “It’s funny because my last album was so personal and my heart was on my sleeve, and now this one has nothing sentimental on it. The way Shears explains it, ‘Last Man Dancing’ is akin to the ultimate house party and the polar opposite to his reflective 2018 self-titled solo debut, which was written in the wake of his devastating break-up with his partner of 11 years, director Chris Moukarbel. “Sam’s such a sweet guy and insanely talented.” “It was just the two of us in this house and it felt like a weird sitcom or something,” he chuckles of The Odd Couple set-up. Before finding his own place, Shears ended up staying with Sam Fender in long-term collaborator and friend Elton John’s Holland Park residence. He’s 15 and he makes an appearance on the album sleeve”).

The trailblazing Scissor Sister is speaking to us via Zoom from his – thankfully unwrecked – London home, where he’s lived for the past eight months after relocating from New Orleans to be closer to his new management, Fascination (“I brought my dog Toby over, which has really grounded me here. “It’s the end of the night at a destroyed house party, and I’ve won the prize!” Jake Shears excitedly explains while showing NME the arresting cover art of his forthcoming album ‘Last Man Dancing’, where he’s pictured triumphantly holding a trophy aloft while surrounded by the shimmering shrapnel of a raucous rave.

Jake one get er done instrumental