Tomorrow’s headlines could read either way: ‘outrageous, cross-dressing, many voiced Cher & Marilyn Monroe impersonator, Jimmy James shocks celebrity world with capable crock of club gold’ or ‘talented yet sadly deluded impersonator trashes reputation made on Edinburgh’s fringe with outrageously average disco record’. Like I say, it could go either way, but on the evidence of tracks like gentle ‘Freindsreunited’ synth-pop tracks like, ‘Old School Disco’ and shocking zoomy, zoom burlesques like ‘Be Bobo Body’ my money is on the latter.
A talent for mimicry that started (tellingly) with episodes of the ‘Sonny & Cher Show’ and enhanced by studies in dramatic art and theatrical make-up, Jimmy James has been called upon to perform for a right old parade of queens and major celebrities including Elton John, Whoopie Goldberg, Debbie Harry, Boy George, and Cyndi Lauper, all clamouring anxiously for his uncanny approximations of Cher, Madonna, Patsy Cline, Stevie Nicks, Babrra Streisand, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli and shitload of other gay icons too boot.
Bearing in mind that the last time the pop-world threw cross-dressing into the fray it was in the 1980s with the likes of Divine, Dead Or Alive and Marilyn, you’d be right in being wary, but whether it’s by chance or a result of lessons learned the first time around, Austrian-born producer, Markus Moser actually does a half-decent job in turning around a dozen or so fairly pedestrian hi-energy disco numbers and delivering an album that is surprisingly free of the usual innuendo and in your face queerity.
It’s not Fischerspooner by any means, but tracks like ‘Desire (Mr Seedy)’, and ‘Jealousy’ are quietly impressive electro journeys, whatever the criteria you use. In fact’s it’s only the ass-shaking party anthems, ‘Famous’ and ‘Fashionista – a quirky, unreliable mash-up of Neil Sedaka crooning and something along the line’s of Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘I’d Like To Move It, Move It’ with a touch of Spongebob Squarepants tossed into the bargain – that fail to square the deal.
The worst you can say about it is that its not to be taken too seriously. Unfortunately, it’s also the best you say.
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