Babydaddy2 

To read our EQ interview with Ana Matronic, click here.

In case you haven't heard, the almighty Scissor Sisters are releasing a new album called "Night Work" at the end of the month and we've already chatted to Ana Matronic about it and last week, we got to ask Babydaddy a few questions about it as well. 

In this EQ interview with Babydaddy, we talk about the sound of "Night Work" and what they were trying to capture in it's sound, some of the key tracks on the new album, filming the "Fire With Fire" video and Babydaddy's thoughts on being a sex symbol for the bear community and his thoughts on Ricky Martin's coming out…enjoy!

"Night Work" is coming out very very soon – how are you feeling about the impending release of the third Scissor Sisters album?
I'm feeling very good about it. I think that's only because I'm very proud of it.  Anything else that happens that's positive or pushes it into the charts will only be great.  We love it – we love playing it live and it's gonna be fun – we feel really good about it!

I spoke to Ana and I've read a few interviews with Jake and it's been said that after the last album and tour you all had to sort of get away from each other and find yourselves again before starting on "Night Work" because life was pretty "full on" then.  Did it ever cross your mind or were you worried that perhaps – that was it? 
You know, Jake and I didn't really take much of a break. We went away for about a month and then got back into the studio full time. I think the worry that "this may not last" OR "this may not continue" was from a good year and a half into working on the record and realizing we had a lot more work to do.  Jake and I for some reason just can't stop.  We got right back to it.  Ana had some great perspective and Del had some great perspective from getting away from it for a little bit – I probably needed it to be honest.

Now I just listened to the album for the first time on the way to the office this morning and I loved it.  Now I sort of noticed that it had an 80's lust, heady, NYC nightlife theme going on.  And even "Sex And Violence" really reminded me of the American Psycho book and movie…was that intentional?
Really?  Did you just think of that on your own?  That song was totally inspired by the movie…

Yeah there is a line in the song where Jake sings about being well-groomed, well-paid and persuasive that immediately made me think of that…
Amazing!  Yeah that was Jake's inspiration for that song!  Yeah – well done! [laughs]  I think it just made sense.  Being a New York band, being a band that makes dance music, being a band that's inspired by pop music from the past, being fans of plenty of current pop music – not necessarily fans of what's on the radio.  I think that era was one of the era's we looked to for inspiration – what was going on in New York in the underground in the 80s and even 90s and how we could continue a tradition if that doesn't sound too pretencious.  How we could pick up where what we felt was the last great bastion of dance music.  Grant it, we love electronic music all through the 90s and plenty of stuff through the now, but I think that era was a synergy of pop and dance that was exciting for us.  It was the hedonism to that era that we have a bit of interest in – a bit of nostalgia event though we weren't there and didn't know exactly what it was like. We were trying to channel a little bit of that decadence.

I've got a Twitter question from LectroLips here - did you actually scrap an entire album before "Night Work"?
It's a sort of dramatic retelling maybe.  On every album, we scrap a lot of music and we definitely had an album's worth of music, if not many albums worth of music that did not make it onto this final album.  A lot of this stuff was written after Stuart Price came on and the album feels very fresh, a lot of the songs are very recent for us and that was part of our process. We were in a tough creative mode when we were a year and a half in the process and at that time, a lot of the music wasn't up to our standard. If not that, then the music wasn't exactly what we wanted – we knew we had to come back with something really strong.

Babbydaddy4

Tell me about the filming of the "Fire With Fire" video – I loved it how you were riding on the back of a trailer through the streets of New York. How was it for you filming on that day?
It was our favourite video to film. It was really fun – it was really exciting. I think we expected to get tomatoes thrown at us. We didn't close off any streets and there were taxis, bikes and cars all riding right alongside us. We had an amazing time and people got really inspired by it and were yelling nice things to us and dancing along as we rode by – it was really exciting!

My favorite track on Nightwork is definitely "Any Which Way" – it grabbed me right away. Ana's spoken bit makes me laugh every time, tell me about that song a little bit – it's definitely just about shagging isn't it?…
Oh yes!  Oh yes!  It's one of the more frivolous songs on the record – it's about fun and about having a good time and maybe getting up to plenty of no good. It was one of those songs in writing that we said let's not worry about writing the most incredible core progression we can think of and re-inventing the wheel – let's do something fun and that comes through. Stuart Price gave us a philosophy in the beginning by saying "records sound like the time you have making them and if you're not having fun – it's not going to sound fun" and I think that song is the essence of what he was saying. We were having a great time making this record and I think you can tell…

I also love "Something Like This" – that track is amazing with all it's sound effects…
Great! "Something Like This" was the last song we wrote for the record. When Jake was in Berlin, he was learning how to make music on his computer and he brought in a little track of something he had done which was the starting point of "Something Like This". I guess you like the more disco songs right?…

Yeah, I like the disco dance I do…
[Laughs] Yeah that was another song where we said let's make a dance song and have a good time…

Ana told me that she wasn't sure about the Mapplethorpe butt shot for the cover, but the butt won her over in the end…how did you feel about it? I know it was Jake's idea…
I hated it!  I know that we have enough going against us right now.  In general the music industry is tougher than it's ever been perhaps and I didn't want any more handicaps on this record.  I was worried that it was just too much. It didn't represent everything we wanted to represent with this record. It felt very Jake. It felt very much like his personality. I feel often getting defensive and get on Ana's side and the female perspective into what we were doing.  But in the end, I did realize that it did say what we wanted to say. The fact that people had such clear and strong feelings about the cover made me begin to like it more and more. The more I talked about it I realized, it was something worth talking about and that can't be said for our first two album covers.

Interesting perspecive – thanks for sharing that!
I would rather hate something than just LIKE it. But I don't hate in now, I love it – I've come to terms with it.

I love the quote on your Wikipedia page – "Jake gets a lot of attention just by virtue of being the lead singer, but when the boys want a little beef, they come to me."  Classic.  Do you enjoy being considered a sex symbol among the bear community?
I'm not convinced I'm a sex symbol in the bear community and I don't really relate to the bear community. I know I'm attracted to big guys and I'm attracted to hairy guys and it's something I try to emulate in myself, but there is nothing wrong with being a sex symbol I guess. I don't get a lot of emails in my inbox every day, but I'll let you know when that starts to happen. I'm pretty humble and I'm single too…

As an out musician, I have to ask your opinion on the Ricky Martin debate.  Should he have come out earlier in his career or waited until he was ready?  How do you feel about this?
I believe in people making choices for themselves. I believe in autonomy. I believe in everyone having the right to decide who they are and what kind of person they are. If he decided to come out of the closet when he did then it's a greater service to the gay community than him never coming out at all. And for all we know, maybe he didn't identify himself as gay when he came out – maybe he was bisexual?  Maybe he hadn't quite come to terms with it himself.  I'm a very staunch opponent of outing.  I don't think it's anyone's business but your own.  No one else is in that person's head.  I think it would have been great if he would have came out earlier, but it wasn't for me to do. That was his choice.  So there you have it – strong opinion. It's his life, he should be able to live it how he wants. Let's not look a gift-horse in the mouth. We have a huge Latin celebrity proudly coming out of the closet and it's a huge service to the gay community.

"Night Work" by Scissor Sisters is released on June 28th.

Read the EQ review of "Night Work"

Read the EQ interview with Ana Matronic