Pop and Jazz Reviews : Shakespear’s Sister Lives Up to Bowie Legacy

David Bowie has a lot to answer for. The master of outrageous performance has inspired countless artists to don exaggerated makeup, sing in a mannered style or assume a strange stage persona in an attempt--usually futile--to broaden the boundaries of popular music.

Two such acts, Shakespear’s Sister and Miss World, were on display Saturday at the Roxy, but only the former did Bowie’s legacy proud.

Siobhan Fahey and Marcella Detroit, the duo at the core of Shakespear’s Sister, are both veterans of the pop music wars, and their experience showed.

The real star of the show was Fahey, formerly of Bananarama. Caked in white face and sporting crazy curls, she bounded about the stage with tireless energy and a different funny face for every turn of mood.

The brooding hit “Stay” and the dance-oriented “Emotional Thing” came off particularly well live, thanks partially to an accomplished but appropriately anonymous backing band. Oddly, it was another band’s composition, T. Rex’s “Hot Love,” in a faithfully rendered glitter-and-glam version, that best captured Shakespear’s Sister’s flamboyant personality.

Opening act Miss World, featuring ex-Pretender Martin Chambers on drums, has a catchy, Standells-like garage rocker in “The First Female Serial Killer,” but a silly lead singer in the posturing Jonathan Perkins.