Call it the shitegeist. In times of war and pestilence, art gets decadent, and all we wanna do is dance. Scissor Sisters are a tight little NY combo who apply rock dynamics to disco’s lust for the transcendent dance, cutting downtown dirt with the glitter of the mirrorball while tooting on champagne flutes. Fronted by a whippet-thin singer in ladies’ leather underwear and a wisecracking disco dominatrix, this lot are closer to Electric Six than Moloko.
The act is polished by New York Darwinian instincts: one at times gets a glimpse of bar band roots, but all that sweat shed in sweaty sheds pays off live: powered by a clipped southpaw drummer and a guitarist who has obviously studied at the Chic academy for dampened string rhythm, they major in economics: the itchy-itchy funk of Talking Heads circa Remain In Light, eurotrash American Gigolo pulses, white reggae, the point where the B52s met Don Was. Jostling my elbow, George Byrne holds that if this lot were around 20 years ago, they would’ve been hanging with the Ze label, and he’s right, although the visual sense is betimes a little too close to Joboxers 1983 Face centrespreads for comfort. The big hit single and finale is of course their (piss) take on ‘Comfortably Numb’, a KC & The Sunshine Band go prog rock one-line gag that would curdle the oil in Nick Mason’s Jag. I doubt Scissor Sisters will be back in venues much bigger than this, but there’s substance here that denotes more than a novelty act.