Scissor Sisters – OVO Hydro, Glasgow, 17 May 2025

“How can less be more?”

Alison Goldfrapp doing ‘Strict Machine’ in a big metallic jacket as a warm-up? A bit much. Sending out a twerking gorilla to open the curtains on your show? A little rich for my tastes. Bringing on Jessie Ware halfway through the set to interpolate ‘Freedom! ’90‘? Total overkill!

Then again, being a “too much” was always part of the appeal with Scissor Sisters. It’s certainly what made their early records hit big in the UK at the time – their cover of ‘Comfortably Numb’ made every dancefloor feel like a palace, and if ‘Take Your Mama’ out didn’t quite sell as many feather boas and glittery cowboy hats as a whole decade’s worth of hen parties, I’m pretty sure it prompted at least as many singalongs. “Good times over good taste” obscures as much as it reveals, but just like the ’90s crowds hadn’t seemed too bothered about whether Oasis were doing the 60’s for the post-Loveless masses, nights out in 2005 weren’t marked by brow-furrowing over whether we needed ’70s glam and disco for people who’d liked that one Fischerspooner song.

“More is more.”

At some point, the endless night out energy of the band stopped making sense in my life, and in many others, judging by their slow drop in their record sales. As a ward against twentieth anniversary album tour seriousness, though, it was hard to beat. It helped that the band mixes up the songs from their debut with highlights from across their discography. The stompers from their second album, ‘Ta-Dah’, created opportunities for carnival that shook off all memories of the overworked originals – Babydaddy and Del Marquis huddled together for the twin guitar solos of ‘She’s My Man’ like the most chic dadrockers in town, later breaking off so Del Marquis can show his steps on ‘I Don’t Feel Like Dancing’.

The strained balladry of ‘Fire’ aside, the tracks from Night Work were even better. When they locked into the groove for ‘Any Which Way’, ‘Invisible Light’ and ‘Sex and Violence’, Scissor Sisters sounded hungry for more lights more drugs more clublife, and haunted by what might happen when all of this runs out.

“Even more is even more.”

The songs from the band’s debut sounded annoyingly vital in 2025. ‘Tits on the Radio’, ‘Music Is The Victim’ and ‘Filthy/Gorgeous’ are now “too much” not in terms of taste – who’s stressed out about the Bee Gees or Elton John or electroclash these days? – but in how they relate to an increasingly conservative, queer-hating world. Too gay. Too confident. Too enchanted with the possibilities of life.

These are songs about sex work and queer survival, played in a style that gets their truth across to a world of disco nannas and glam uncles without compromising that truth at all. For one bright, gaudy evening, “too much” may not have made everything right, but celebrating it felt like a pretty good place to start.