Scissor Sisters on the cutting edge of nouveau glam

Don't make the mistake of calling the bassist and songwriter for the New York band Scissor Sisters by his given name, Scott Hoffman.

"It's Babydaddy to you," he said with mock testiness while speaking by telephone from his apartment in Brooklyn.

Hoff — pardon, Babydaddy — should be allowed a few giddy diva moments.

The Scissors' self-titled debut album was one of the top-selling CDs in Great Britain last year, with nearly 1.5 million copies sold there. U.S. audiences have been slower to catch on to the band's eccentric hybrid of East Village edge, Queen and disco; the CD has yet to reach gold status here.

But driven by the underground success of their dance hit "Comfortably Numb," a daring (or sacrilegious, depending on your musical taste) "Saturday Night Fever" take on the Pink Floyd original, the group has signed with Universal and conquered the late-night TV circuit.

"Comfortably Numb" has garnered the band a Grammy nomination for best dance single, pitting them against a motley crew of contenders — Kylie Minogue, Basement Jaxx, Chemical Brothers and Britney Spears — at the Feb. 13 awards show.

The band triumphantly returns for a third visit to Seattle to perform Thursday at the Paramount Theatre.

"It's a bit of a homecoming for us," Babydaddy said. He noted that the band's flamboyant lead singer and main songwriting collaborator, Jake Shears, whose real name is Jason Sellards, spent his "impressionable years" in the city, where he attended Northwest School on Capitol Hill.

(On Wednesday, Babydaddy and Shears are scheduled to do DJ sets with live vocals at the Baltic Room on Capitol Hill.)

In true diva form, Shears declined to take questions for this story because, as his publicist relayed it, "He's not doing any interviews right now."

It's easy to doubt the potential for longevity of a group whose name refers to an act between women that cannot be further described in these pages, and whose frontman, Shears (Get the reference?), struts bare-chested around the stage in leather pants and the occasional boa, hitting high notes that uncannily recall Elton John or the Bee Gees.

Babydaddy admits the band has enjoyed a relatively painless rise to fame from its humble beginnings playing shows in New York's gritty Lower East Side and at music festivals in Britain. The band has even been the subject of gossip in England's famously sleazy tabloids, a sign that they have arrived if ever there was one.

The group is about to release a concert DVD, "We Are Scissor Sisters — and So Are You," complete with a documentary of the band and all of their videos. They're also scheduled to launch their first tours of Australia and Japan.

Just don't expect to see members of the quintet — including drummer Paddy Boom, guitarist Del Marquis and the only female member, Ana Matronic — lounging in Learjets, sipping Cristal and nibbling caviar anytime soon.

"We have never been interested in being famous and having a 'moment,' " Babydaddy said, describing himself as the curmudgeon of the group. "This album, we learned a lot from it. But now it's time to make another one and move forward."

Work on the next CD is set to begin in March.

Still, the group's sudden stardom has hit home with Babydaddy, who also plays guitar and keyboard for the group.

He recalls with amazement the band's recent show in his hometown of Lexington, Ky. The band had never played there before. He'd left the city a gay Jewish kid with a taste for Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins and returned a 28-year-old rock star whose stylist goes by the name "Mrs. Jones."

"It was incredible — the [Lexington] Herald-Leader just went all out with this huge feature on me," he said. "It was nearly the whole front page. Bless 'em."

Babydaddy said he acquired the nickname from older gay friends who felt that he still had a baby face despite his manly-man beard. "It's also a slight reference to Jerry Springer culture," he said.

The Scissor Sisters excel at clever references that make people do mental double takes.

"It's Pop Art," Babydaddy said, warning that he didn't want to sound too pretentious.

But the secret to understanding this eccentric group is to remember that behind the campiness and addictive melodies, there's serious musicianship and heartfelt lyricism.

The latest single, "Filthy/Gorgeous," captures their aesthetic.

The gay subtext of the bouncy "Take Your Mama," which recalls Elton John in his brash '70s youth, showcases the band's ability to channel spirits from a bygone era while pulling in the listener with compelling lyrics: "It's a struggle/Livin' like a good boy oughta/In the summer/Watchin' all the girls pass by/ When your mama/Heard the way that you'd been talking/I tried to tell you/That all she'd wanna do is cry."

Shears writes the lyrics to most of the band's songs, and Babydaddy focuses more on the instrumentation and production.

"We're like a grouchy old couple," Babydaddy said of the pair's creative relationship. "Jake will come in with a really crazy idea, and I'm sort of sitting there asking, 'How can we make this work?' "

Whether the band mates are conscious of their influences for each song, there are some general sources: Roxy Music and David Bowie and "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

"The music from the Muppets also," Babydaddy said, somewhat incongruously. "Some of those songs make you kind of laugh, but wow, they were some amazing songs."

"To me, pop music was Billy Joel, while riding in the car with my family," Babydaddy added.

"That's what music is — throwing in what you know and love, mixing it up and creating something new and interesting out of it," he said of his band's sound. "We just let things come out and worry about it later."

Tyrone Beason: 206-464-2251 or tbeason@seattletimes.com