Free Scissor Sisters podcast

IT WAS meant to be a low-key concert to road-test tracks from their recently completed second album and warm up for a few summer festival slots. But Scissor Sisters don’t do low-key and within a minute of the flamboyant five’s appearance on Scala’s small stage a full-scale pop party was under way.

Admittedly, Scissor Sisters couldn’t have picked a better crowd had they held auditions themselves.

The hip gay club Popstarz was hosting the event and there were drag queens vying with the band for Best Outfit (singer Jake Shears just pipped them with an electric blue-and-yellow ensemble that included a backless silk waistcoat and chiffon sleeves but no shirt) and a few hundred dancing devotees who knew every word to every old song.

Plus, up on the balcony, was the ultimate party accessory — Sir Elton John, tapping his toes and nodding his approval at several new songs.

“It’s good to be home,” announced Ana Matronic after Take Your Mama out, an explosive opener that proved that a year out from touring has done nothing to dampen Scissor Sisters’ on-stage energy.

Indeed, it was at a show at Scala in early 2004 that the band first became media darlings and their return found them improved tenfold. Tits on the Radio, one of the weaker tracks on their two-million-selling debut album, had morphed into a muscular electro-monster, Laura strutted its stuff with more panache than in the past, and the ballad Mary was up there with Sir Elton’s best Seventies output.

As for tracks from Ta-Dah, the new album released in September, two or three had chart-topping potential and only one let the side down slightly.

She’s My Man, a duet that gave a slimmed-down Matronic equal billing with a peroxide-blonde Shears, was a stomping Seventies-style rock song, Paul McCartney sounded like speeded-up Bee Gees and Kiss You off was a sexy highlight that borrowed from Blondie’s Atomic. Everybody Wants the Same Thing, however, was too MOR, written perhaps with an eye on breaking the US, where the band remain a cult act.

Essentially, Scissor Sisters are a rock-meets-disco outfit who plunder from the past but use beats to sound modern, yet their brand of pop is utterly unique. Who else could get away with a track, I Can’t Decide, that blends Abba and Dolly Parton and breaks for a vaudeville instrumental, or sing a big, cheesy, end-of-the-evening ballad, Land of a Thousand Words, and come away with their credibility intact?

Sadly, Sir Elton couldn’t be coaxed down to play his piano part on the fabulous new single I Don’t Feel Like Dancing (yes, Shears does sing it as if he were Leo Sayer), but he did wave his arms in the air. Scissor Sisters are back and you simply have to succumb.

Free Scissor Sisters podcast