Last Man Dancing is the new album from Jake Shears, released today on Mute. The project features the new single & title track, a brand new collaboration with Kylie Minogue (Voices), plus acclaimed recent singles Too Much Music and I Used To be In Love. Shears will take Last Man Dancing out on the road this summer, with an instantly-sold out date at London’s Village Underground tonight (2nd June), international festivals including South London’s Mighty Hoopla (4th June) and Glastonbury Festival’s Field Of Avalon (24th June), plus in-store events for week of release continuing below.
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 whilst sounding, too, 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 realise 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 Shears: “is about language and the loss of meaning, changing symbols and forgotten history”, whilst 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 whatever life throws at you: a theme rendered memorably through the title track’s video, in which the Mesa, Arizona-hailing star earns his trophy not just as the Last Man Dancing but without doubt as one of this generation’s most trailblazing, positive pop stars.
Listen to Last Man Dancing now!
Even amidst its high-octane energy, Jake Shears’ new album offers Scissor Sisters’ front-man the opportunity to reflect on how he got to where he is today. In his own words, Last Man Dancing is “a journey through the ultimate house party. The first half gives you those singalong moments that get everyone into it at the top of night. As the hours turn, you can go a little deeper and darker, more where the second half of the record goes. It’s inspired by all the over-the-top house parties I’ve thrown throughout my life. I was born to host, I love to DJ and my favourite hours of a party are from 4-6am. There’s nothing more luxurious than being as loud as you want in the early hours. Not everyone might make it to the end, but the last ones dancing are possibly rewarded with the most magical moments of the evening.”
In a polymathic career which variously takes in multi-million global album sales, Brits, Ivor Novellos, an acclaimed memoir, a Broadway show, plus his Olivier-Award-winning musical Tammy Faye, Jake Shears’ pull to keep moving has remained one constant: whether in the heat of the dance floor, or in creating cathartic and unconventional art. With work that still speaks evenly to outsiders and the masses, catch the staron the road this summer and watch out for more news to follow soon.
Upcoming UK live dates:
JUNE
2nd – Village Underground, London
4th – Mighty Hoopla Festival, London
5th – Rough Trade East, London (In Conversation & Signing)
24th – Glastonbury Festival (Avalon Stage), Somerset
28th – Lytham Festival, Lytham
JULY
8th – Pride, Bristol
23rd – Splendour Festival, Nottingham
AUGUST
25th – Lost Village Festival, Lincolnshire (DJ Set)
27th – Pride, Manchester
Live photography of Jake Shears by Kalpesh Patel @ The O2 Arena, London
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