More than an ocean divides the United States and the United Kingdom. A sensibility gap looms between the two as well, wider and deeper in some places than the water.

You'll find proof in the recent career of the Scissor Sisters. In England, they're scream-worthy pop stars, embraced by everyone from grandmothers to schoolgirls to music's savvy set.

In 2004, the group's self- titled debut became the best-selling album of the year in the U.K., moving in the millions. On these shores, it moved 282,929 copies, according to SoundScan.

Band co-leader Scott Hoffman, the Lexington native who goes by the name Babydaddy, isn't short on theories as to why. "American pop culture is really boring right now," he says. "And we're a Puritan country that's afraid to offend anybody. Also, the Scissor Sisters write real songs with melodies, and in America right now the (rhythm) track has become the new pop. We don't make sound bites for people with short attention spans."

Instead they make something that sounds like the '70s Bee Gees being waylaid by classic Elton John. With frontman Jake Shears' campy falsetto quipping over Hoffman's bouncy piano riffs, Sisters songs have an unusually animated flair. But it often masks more complicated messages below. Shears' lyrics contrast the music's froth with darker characters and gnarlier emotions.

Never is this clearer than on I Don't Feel Like Dancin', the first single from the Sisters' new album, whimsically titled Ta-Dah, out Tuesday. It might be the first club anthem ever written about shunning the disco in favor of a brooding night at home.

That's typical of the group's intriguing bait-and-switch approach. "We'll have a song about a transvestite selling her body while on acid, then put it to a melody that little girls can sing," Hoffman says.

The result takes full advantage of pop culture's capacity for creative subversion. "Subversion is different from shock value or simple sex or violence," Hoffman explains. "It has more layers."

The group began exploring them the moment they chose their name, which stands for a lesbian sex act. Their music also adopted an outsider's view. Shortly after Shears and Hoffman formed the group in 2001, they hit on the mad idea to recast Pink Floyd's hazy salute to apathy, Comfortably Numb, as an ecstatic neo-disco song. At first, the result didn't impress many outside the reaches of New York. But eventually Numb nabbed the attention of U.K. DJs, and that got the band signed to Polydor Records overseas. After much touring and hard work over there, the song wound up in the top 20. The album went all the way to No. 1.

One potential issue for the band is that three of its five members are openly gay, including its two leaders. But Hoffman thinks the problem is "bigger than that. Some people will dismiss us before they listen, just because they see a picture and see that we dress up or act flamboyant and they say, 'That isn't me.'"

Obviously, this hasn't been a problem overseas. "The gay thing and the flamboyant thing have never been issues in England," Hoffman says. "They embraced Queen and David Bowie way before America did. Over there people find a song they like, and it just goes from there. It's a song-loving country."

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