NEW York’s favourite underground party band crossed over to the mainstream years ago but there is still a gleefully subversive streak to their schtick.
It shows when they dress up in punky couture or sneaking gay slang onto an establishment show such as Strictly Come Dancing, as they did last week with a stylised performance of their defiantly odd single Let’s Have A Kiki.
But it is as a live band that they really excel, whipping up excitement from the moment they hit the stage to the sound of a disco siren, irresistibly funky bassline and Jake Shears unleashing his unimpeachable falsetto all over Any Which Way, assisted by a couple of handjiving backing singers who looked like they had come straight from a John Waters film shoot. When so many groups struggle to locate a personality between them, it feels almost unfair that Scissor Sisters should boast two top drawer frontfolks in the lean helium-voiced machine that is Shears and the abfab Ana Matronic.
These days, the Scissor Sisters’ set really attests to the breadth of their musical ambition. To their original stock of party tunes and pop ballads, they have added a dash of new wave, art rock and stadium pop, as well as cherry-picking from numerous club genres.
Highlights were numerous but as that inspired cover of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb dovetailed nicely into their own prog disco epic Invisible Light they delivered a timely reminder that there is an art to making great pop music. In a world of homogenous pop acts we need this accomplished, entertaining and charismatic band more than ever.
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