Scissor Sisters at Sound Academy – 06/28/12

Review By Mike Gallagher, Photos By Stephen McGill

Parties for this year’s Pride celebrations in Toronto unofficially kicked off Thursday night to yet another sweaty show with New York darlings the Scissor Sisters.

Much like the muted response for the band’s great third album, Night Work, their latest, Magic Hour, has arrived with little fanfare or notice and has seen their audience diminish. This is a shame because everybody should enjoy a Scissor Sisters party.

These diminished results totally baffle me as the Sisters have put out consistently enjoyable albums, although their “hit” album, Ta-Dah didn’t really do much for me. But Night Work was in my Top 10 of 2010 and Magic Hour continues the party vibe although in a slightly mellower way.

The Sisters always bring their “A” game to concerts and tonight was no exception. While Jake Shears is usually a combustible ball of energy you try to follow as he bounces across the stage, tonight the man is relatively subdued. Or he just moved so fast my eyes couldn’t keep up.

The crowd which filled about two thirds of the Sound Academy were all ready to burst. Despite it being a Thursday night, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who wasn’t acting like it was Friday night. Everybody under the rainbow colours and possibly many allies too, were there to kick this year’s Pride off to one hedonistic start.

Tonight’s other star, was definitely secondary singer Ana Matronic. She mobilized the troops gathered in front of her with some empowering and inspiring stage banter. Her featured vocals on “Skin This Cat” were also a highlight for me.

Shears toned the frantic energy down a tad, which could be attributed to the set list. Some slower songs were plugged into the set that threw the pace off. Someone mentioned that on their Night Work tour, just watching Shears was exhausting! So the man can be forgiven for taking a break and this is all relative of course.

The band covered all their bases touching on all 4 albums with Magic Hour getting the most love from the band. Of the new tracks, “Let’s Have a Kiki” seemed to really light up an already lit audience. Sure there were some notable absences, most notably “Filthy Gorgeous” but their customary run through Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” was impressive as always.

The band closed their set out with “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing” and if that was indeed the case the place would have emptied out for their encore, which it did not.