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(Polydor/Universal)
You have to be pretty brave to cover a Pink Floyd song, especially ‘Comfortably Numb’. The original is one of the main tunes on ‘The Wall’, a moody, epic track which is sung alternately from the perspective of a doctor trying to revive a drugged-up rock star in time for a gig, and the floating, near-death thoughts of the numbed rock star himself, before descending into a screaming hard rock guitar solo finish. So it’s quite a heavy tune in its original form.
Not this version. Scissor Sisters have taken an intense slab of depressing high concept prog rock and turned it into a camp-as-you-like electro-disco singalong. The biggest factor in the song, and whether you’ll like it or not, is the Bee Gees-style falsetto singing – everything sounds like it’s being sung in a deliberately annoying voice, and there are even double-tracked harmony parts that don’t sound like they’re actually in harmony. It’s all a bit much the first time you hear it, especially if you’re used to the tone of the Pink Floyd original.
As a Pink Floyd nerd myself, I almost puked my brains out of my ears in disgust the first time I heard it. But after a while I got used to the silliness of the sound, and was able to enjoy the fact that the song is still a great one no matter what, and the quirky lo-fi disco backing actually makes you want to get up and do funny little dances to it. It’s relatively straightforward as far as the tune itself goes, but there’s a nice guitar clicking away, some cool pinging sounds and a plinky-plonky chorus. Is it rubbish or is it brilliant? I don’t know, actually. I think it’s both. It’s a track you certainly don’t forget in a hurry, and is guaranteed to get a reaction of some sort out of absolutely everyone.
Remix-wise I wasn’t expecting a lot. There’s a Fatboy Slim ‘extended’ mix which is spectacularly restrained (or lazy) for Norman Cook, as it basically just adds a bit more of a house beat to the original mix, making it slightly more dancefloor-friendly. There are a couple of little flourishes with the beat every now and then, but otherwise it’s extremely straightforward.
The Hughes & Spier mix gives us a bit of a funked-up, techy kind of beat with some neat squelchy, bleepy farts going off in the background, and lots of chopped-up vocal snippets thrown throughout just to give trainspotters a clue as to what track they’re listening to. It’s fun – skips and rolls along nicely and has a cool, cheeky groove to it.
But the surprise of the century is the Paper Faces remix (Paper Faces is aka Stuart Price aka Jacques Lu Cont aka Les Rythmes Digitales aka etc, etc). Using only the first two vocal lines from the song looped over and over one another, the track starts out as a laid-back, melodic bit of electro house with big synths chiming out a lush chord sequence as the vocal loop builds up over the top. Then the whole thing drops dead, straight down to a 4/4 kick drum and a huge, bassy, farty acid noise, before building its way up into a fantastically techy chunk of acid house, with rattling hi-hats, screeching aciiiiieeed, head-fuckingly annoying (in a good way) vocal loops and a couple of huuuuge breakdowns. Big swooshing noises herald the kicking off of the track each time, while a live-sounding bass twangs out a chugging bassline. The anthemic chords of the opening then come back in to calm things down, before thoroughly having the shit kicked out of them by the howling 303 and stuttery techno beats that were hiding in the background. It’s quite a trip – a real stand-out, arms in the air, stomp yer ass off bit of electro acid house. The pick of the mixes by a mile, and one of my favourite tracks of recent months. Top work Jacques!
