SXSW 2010: Scissor Sisters, Stubbs, Austin

are the type of high energy queer pop, the chaps sporting, groin grinding sort of music makers that scare the bejesus out of parents and American lawmakers; turning the Middle West against gay marriage and Teletubbies alike. In short, it’s good clean fun.

The group wails their way through such funkified favorites as ‘Comfortably Numb’, as well as their own offerings. One and all their beats are infectious, their movements provocative in the way that only a stage decorated in bright magenta giant scissors with legs can be. The venue, out behind Stubb’s Barbecue joint, was not filled to capacity, though the audience was packed tight together for warmth. The last night of SXSW revealed itself to be the grumbly, blustery sort of cold you usually feel right as the autumn begins to die, and the dispirited huddled masses who had come to watch Scissor Sisters do their thing seemed swayed back forth as much against the weather as for the act before them.

But all the way up front, pressed so close and tight against the stage so as to be totally unreachable, were those devout few, who clearing a modest dance floor with their heels, churned up the Texas dust and dirt in praise of the fabulous.