Maximalism is too timid a word: the Scissor Sisters’ first tour in a decade rolls in like an alien carnival. A gorilla-suited master of ceremonies pulls a curtain to reveal the New York band’s logo standing statuesque: scissors split wide open, blades curving into shapely legs. Amid a deserted jeep, retro payphone and broken highway, the metaphor is clear: the Sisters are a crash-landed UFO shaking up dusty Americana.
More than twenty years after their self-titled debut album rocketed them from New York’s queer cabarets to household-name status in the UK, the band tumble from the shadows – effervescent frontman Jake Shears in bedazzled denim, cool-headed guitarist Del Marquis, and PVC-clad multi-instrumentalist Babydaddy – and the bawdy, stabbing synths of early single Laura pull a sold-out crowd to their feet.
An irreverent reworking of classic and glam rock, disco and psychedelia with a vinegary end-of-the-pier humour, the Scissor Sisters album is nine-times platinum in the UK, where the band’s freaky theatricality found a spiritual home. From the impossibly falsetto cover of Comfortably Numb to the spiky surrealism of Tits on the Radio, so powerful is the band’s magnetism that electropop legend Alison Goldfrapp performs as support, and disco queen Jessie Ware gallops from the wings to scream “Do it!!!” on a barnstorming Take Your Mama.
With songs so evergreen, you might reasonably feel that the staging is … too much. Yet somehow a dizzying procession of animated penguins, elderly folk in VR headsets and the Tragic Clown from the Sims video game franchise makes these bone-deep familiar songs feel as absurd as when they first hit the charts.
Missing from the spectacle is the arched eyebrow of founding member Ana Matronic, and the band wisely chose not to replace her. Instead, Bridget Barkan and Amber Martin join as a bawdy chorus line, and Martin’s thrillingly unpredictable rendition of Any Which Way is one of the night’s greatest highs.
Twenty years ago the Sisters were pop aliens. Today they receive a hero’s welcome, and today’s pop outsiders have a clear lineage with these queer, surrealist showtunes. Shears and co take a Broadway-sized bow next to bouncing inflatable tits, and it’s true: sometimes more truly is more.
• The Scissor Sisters are touring the UK and Ireland until 28 May
