Let's Have a Kiki With the Scissor Sisters

The Scissor Sisters concert was, happily, exactly what I expected: a sleazy cartoon.

I’m quite happy I got to see them at the Electric Factory. At an hour and a half, the show left out a few songs that I might have liked to hear but it was like a tasty meal that offers you just enough. The show was more stripped down than I might have expected, given the band’s flamboyant image, but it was very high energy.

The material from the Scissor Sisters’ new album Magic Hour went over really well. Apparently the rest of the crowd likes the song “Let’s Have a Kiki” as much as we do. It’s a deeply goofy song, based on an Ana Matronic answering machine message that she left for a friend after the police raided the club she went to and she invited herself to the friend’s house to lock the doors, lower the blinds and “have a kiki.” Then the song cuts up, speeds up and slows down the answering machine message and adds frequent tribal drum breaks.

The highlight of the show was the one-two-three punch of “Comfortably Numb,” “Invisible Light” and “Shady Love.” The first was a dark and sweaty performance of the disco Pink Floyd cover that I have loved ever since I saw Jake Shears falsetto and leap his way through it on Saturday Night Live. “Invisible Light” was as epic and mystical live as on record. “Shady Love” is where the sleazy cartoon comes in. It walks the line between wacky and trashy and the crowd was especially into it.

Also in the sleazy cartoon category were the opener “Any Which Way,” the new “Keep Your Shoes On” and the breakthrough hit “Take Your Mama.” Each of them was a fun, off-kilter ode to sexytimes.

“I Don’t Feel Like Dancing” sums up part of Scissor Sisters’ appeal to me: It’s a danceable, accessible song with vaguely ‘70s AM radio roots. It was one song during which I actually … wait for it … did feel like dancing! (See what I did there?)

My one complaint was that Jake Shears wore way too much clothing. I find him to be unreasonably hot. It’s something about his voice and his manic dance moves. The most naked he got was topless with baggy silver colored pants. Surely a former go-go boy could have done better than that.