Scissor Sisters Warehouse Live April 4, 2011
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There are few bands that make Rocks Off grin like an idiot, and last night we officially added the Scissors Sisters to that short list. For the next few days we will probably be lamenting that we didn't dance enough, as if the band was a depleting resource. No we sound like their damned street team.
Mixing the sauciest Queen, trash disco, Emotional Rescue-era Stones, and a healthy dash of hedonism, the Scissors are either your worst homophobic nightmare come to life, or a confetti and glitter-covered workout of glam-rock proportions for a generation drunk on pop-punk, Britney, and Bravo. We prefer to say "fuck it" and get down with the glitter. We know who raised us.
Armed with music from last year's excellent Night Work, the Scissors came into Houston hot off a hitch opening for Lady Gaga, a prospect that makes this burly, hairy Little Monster giddy in all the wrong ways. The thought of the dance party that happened last night at Warehouse Live happening before a blood and nudity-filled Gaga show hurts our head.
The Scissors are fronted by Jake Shears and Ana Matronic, who come off like a demented Pee Wee and Miss Yvonne, and the secret word is almost always "sex". Opening with Night Work's title track, the band was well-oiled machine. The music breathes and screams, and it's relentlessly catchy. The shirtless guy in the leather chaps and heart-dotted underwear with the team of boys surrounding him seemed to approve.
There are times while watching the band live that you laugh out loud because, for one, the shit is so thick with sass that it sticks to you like perfume, and two, you feel like you are somewhere you maybe shouldn't be, if you subscribe to conventional male macho American paranoia. If you don't, and like us don't care who makes the music as long as our hips move, then the Scissors are your Led Zeppelin.
The mid-section of the show was a full-on rock orgy, with the band reeling out the coming-out anthem "Take Your Mama", the raunched-out "Harder You Get" and the Matronic's own solo showacase "Skin This Cat", with the Christina Hendricks-looking singer (yeah, we know) cooing over a Peaches beat.
Shears has been blessed with a dynamic falsetto, and coupled with Matronic's sturdy wail, it makes for magic on record, but live with questionable mixing, it gets muddled. "Night Life" could have been more even, but it did the job. The constant flurries of confetti in the pit sort of evened it out. Shear's sullen, solo, acoustic-assisted "Sex And Violence" wasn't the sunniest part of the night, but it made for a great capper to a night full of not giving a good goddamn. 2006's ABBA-rocking Ta Dah cut "I Don't Feel Like Dancin'" and "Invisible Light" closed out the night.
It was too much rock and too much fun for a Monday, as we are slowly finding out that that is when the true fun and fearless freaks come out to play. Suck it, Saturday.
Personal Bias: Sucker for a spectacle, and our favorite Queen album is The Works.
The Crowd: Boys, boys, boys, and a handful of extremely drunk and attractive gals. Monday is the new Friday?
Overheard in the Crowd: "The bigger the hair, the closer to heaven. The bigger the bush, the closer to hell."
Random Notebook Dump: Just saw two kids that we went to nondenominational church with in the late '90s here, all decked out. Pretty sure we got "saved" together too.
