Scissor Sisters are sheer entertainment

Scissor Sisters

At: Avalon, Friday night

No crystal ball is necessary to see the career trajectory of the Scissor Sisters, especially as the band played before a multifarious sold-out audience at Avalon on Friday night. All that was needed to see where the band is headed was a clear view of the stage, and perhaps a few splashy cocktails.

Based on the pop-disco quintet's Boston performance, Scissor Sisters' future looks something like this: Two more wildly successful albums will follow its current, self-titled debut. In 2008, HBO will offer the band its own variety show, which, following a mammothly successful debut with guest stars Madonna and the Muppets, will anchor the cable network's Sunday night lineup for three years. Other networks will try to copy the formula, resulting in flops such as ABC's ''Fischerspooner Goodtime Happy Hour."

The Scissor Sisters' hit show will be yanked off the air when lead singer Jake Shears becomes embroiled in a sex scandal with a married Hollywood leading man and his wife. The band will lie low in Monte Carlo for several years, eventually surfacing in Las Vegas, where it will become a staple of the strip, out-grossing Celine Dion and a roboticized Wayne Newton, combined.

Perhaps it's a bit hasty to look so far into the Scissor Sisters' future, but the New York ensemble is so solidly entertaining it's hard not to grow excited about the possibilities. Friday night's show felt like a disco ball whipping along at 45 revolutions per minute. This is a band that will do anything to keep its audience in high spirits, including, but not limited to, employing the use of a cowbell and wearing giant vests made entirely of feathers.

Kicking off with the punchy ''Laura," the band made its way through the entirety of its self-titled album, reproducing songs flawlessly. Shears, who combines the energy of Richard Simmons with the aura of Barry Gibb, quickly gave up on trying to keep his gold lam tank top on his shoulders and instead focused on belting out a blissful version of ''Comfortably Numb."

The Scissor Sisters' secret weapon at live shows, former cabaret hostess Ana Matronic, dedicated the evening's performance to ''The Bionic Woman" (the show premiered the same night 29 years earlier), before launching into a crowd-pleasing song with a title that can't be printed here. If the band were simply a bundle of cheeky pop-culture references and sequined caftans, this shtick would grow tiresome after the first Sonny and Cher-like interchange. But Scissor Sisters appear to have a keen understanding of how to construct an impeccable pop song. The influences -- from Nile Rodgers's guitar licks to Elton John's piano riffs -- were easy to pick out. But the end result still sounded wonderfully fresh.

Christopher Muther can be reached at muther@globe.com