(Photos: Lindsey Best)
Now that I have seen Of Montreal in concert a few times, I almost consider their show a guilty pleasure in a way. Although I admire Kevin Barnes and his music (even if I thought Skeletal Lamping was a glorious failure), there is something about the theatricality of his stage show that reminds me of watching a bunch of art school kids putting on a performance rather than an out-and-out professional show. Maybe it’s the ramshackle props or the people in costumes, but an Of Montreal show to me feels like a portal to my days at Sarah Lawrence College where androgyny and sexuality ran rampant through impromptu performances.
“All of their songs are really sexual,” said one college age audience member standing near me. “He’s going to be really sexual on stage.” The dude probably no idea what he was in for.
But as the syrupy voice of a young Michael Jackson sang “Give Me One More Chance” over the PA, a stage show of a different type began. Kansas City musician Janelle Monae, hot off her great record The ArchAndroid, turned in a set that threatened to steal the evening before Barnes and company got started. Following a recorded PSA that demanded we either “Dance or Die,” Monae took the stage in a black robe, something she quickly threw off to reveal a coiffed pompadour, a frilly white shirt and tight black jeans. During her 50-minute set, Monae played much of her new record, including “Make the Bus” where Barnes joined her onstage to sing his part from the record. The set ended with an energetic version of “Cold War” that made the crowd bust out dancing and then “Tightrope,” balloons filling the theater, turning a performance about a time traveling android into an out and out party.
Monae would be a tough act to follow, although Barnes and Of Montreal matched it with energy and enthusiasm. Taking a much minimal approach compared to the Skeletal Lamping stage show bonanza, the performance began with a cacophony of noise. A pair of gun-totin’ people in animal masks and wearing gasmasks prowled the stage. The rest of the band stood in a semicircle around the stage as Barnes used the extra space to dance and prance about. Soon, they burst into the driving “Coquet Coquette,” from new album False Priest. More people in costume came onto the stage, wearing oversized skull masks, the song ending as the animal heads blew them away.
More so than any other Of Montreal I’ve seen, this performance was the Kevin Barnes Show, his bandmates off to the periphery. During “Suffer for Fashion,” “Our Riotous Defects” and “Like a Tourist,” Barnes tapped into his inner Prince: dancing, speak-singing, coming onto the audience, gyrating and even letting out the occasional shriek. During “Sex Karma,” Barnes may have been practicing for the Air Sex championships as he humped a woman in a pig costume for a good minute before flipping her around and grinding her doggy style for awhile. Then he licked the codpiece of one of the male actors on the stage.
Musically, the show sounded good if not a little too bass-heavy. Honestly, the Skeletal Lamping duo of “Plastis Wafers” and “St. Exquisite’s Confession,” retrofitted with a new driving beat, were highlights of the evening. Barnes’ “Best friend in the world,” Monae returned the favor by joining him on-stage for “Enemy Gene,” but the heavy bass drowned out most of the song.
The show stretched on for close to two hours, Barnes showing an indefatigable amount of energy. Songs like “Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider” and “She’s a Rejecter” both hit the mark, everyone bouncing up and down around me. Meanwhile, Barnes performed the dark new song “Casualty of You” backstage, a videotape of him seeing in the hallway telegraphed to a makeshift screen. While he once again simulated sex in a veiled cage during “Around the Way.”
After throwing the audience a bone with the pleasing “Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse,” Barnes once again reverted into Prince during an extended freakout jam, muttering, “Everyone wants to take home a memento. Everyone wants to crescendo,” before falling into a stream-of-consciousness monologue. The band then finished the set with “For Our Elegant Caste” and the rousing “A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger.”
Last time I saw Of Montreal, they treated us with an encore of songs by Franz Ferdinand and Nirvana. This time around, it was a Michael Jackson medley featuring “Thriller,” “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” and “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing).” Monae came out to join the party and once again Of Montreal put on a satisfying, if somewhat silly, concert.
