You wouldn’t need a Texas Instruments calculator to graph the progression of of Montreal’s live show. The travelling parade of ridiculousness and gluttony has been heading straight for the sky for the past decade, and with their last tour with Janelle Monae they possibly reached their peak. This current excursion saw the band scaling everything back, in a sense, by playing smaller venues and employing less of, well, everything.
The other side of the coin is that Of Montreal’s song-craft has not been on the same trajectory of their live show. It saw a peak with the Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? album and had been followed with two decent, but not classic, outings. This has not hurt their popularity, which seems to have only increased with the release of Skeletal Lamping and False Priest. So, the unfortunate side-effect for longer-term of Montreal fans, like myself, was that other fantastic albums like Satanic Panic In The Attic and The Sunlandic Twins are nearly forgotten in their setlist. Luckily, for most of the fans in attendance, they were in elementary school when these albums were released and got their fix of the three most recent full-lengths.
Starting at an unheard-of 7:15 (the venue, Avalon, is also a popular dance-club and clearly wanted the show to be finished in time to reopen the doors at 11 for the club-thirsty Hollywood socialites.), of Montreal was preceded with two openers. Painted Palms had an MGMT-meets-Yeasayer vibe and easily won over the young crowd with solid melodic lines and enough bottled weirdness to seem cutting-edge. However, they really weren’t offering anything difficult or interesting, but rather, were playing to current (or not-so-current) trends. Regardless, the audience was pleased and the band left with the feeling of success.
It is doubtful that Nite Jewel left feeling with the same accomplishment, which was unfortunate given the band’s clear talent and taste level. Singer Ramona Gonzalez tried to graciously wade through technical difficulties with a long story of Prince’s concert the night before and even tried an improvised Stevie Wonder cover. Sadly, discomfort is discomfort and Nite Jewel couldn’t hide theirs, which eventually turned to frustration as they were only able to share a handful of songs. However, the seed has been planted that there are elements worth paying attention to, and a second chance would not be difficult to grant.
Now, there might be some sort of sense or overarching theme to the of Montreal stage show. There might. More likely, it is just a series of unrelated random events used to please the visual senses while Kevin Barnes and his backing band run through a parade of their beloved songs. There were even costume changes for the primary band members, at which point Davey Pierce and Clayton Rychlic took the microphone for brief moments in the spotlight (note: Rychlic’s “My Funny Valentine” rendition was shockingly good). The fans reacted positively to each song opening, losing their shit particularly hard during “Suffer For Fashion,” “Oslo In The Summertime,” and “Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse.”
But more important was what was going on behind the band. There were winged angel things that glittered in the light. There were numerous wrestling matches, many which seemed to revolve around America vesus non-America theme. There were boobs, there was a lobster man, there were pig masks, there was crowd-surfing, and on and on. It was a lot to take in, but not in a bad way, just in the way that is expected out of the band. Still, having seen of Montreal before it had come to this, when it was a weird show but the music still came first, part of me thinks the band can never return to that sort of a show, now that people expect them to consistently top themselves with their on-stage antics. And, when you reach that point, it puts a strain on the audience to still enjoy going to a show to hear the music, it becomes all about watching the show.
But, there were indeed some payoffs for people there to hear the music. “Cato As A Pun” was a slow-jam surprise and “She’s A Rejector” acted as an unexpected set culmination piece after the just-silly gimmick jam of “Our Riotous Defects.” But, just when the music had again seemed to take hold, more wrestling erupted. Team U.S.A. seemed to prevail and “America The Beautiful” was played on violin, erupting in a full-crowd singalong. It was a fitting conclusion for a band that revolves around the sentiment of “what the fuck?” I just liked it a little better when the audience used to be in on the joke.
Setlist:
L’age D’or
Suffer for Fashion
Gronlandic Edit
For Our Elegant Caste
Famine Affair
Yip Deceiver
Like a Tourist
Plastis Wafer
St. Exquisite’s Confessions
Oslo in the Summertime
My Funny Valentine
Cato as a Pun
Coquet Coquette
Slave Translator
Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse
A Sentence of Sorts In Kongsvinger
Our Riotous Defects
She’s a Rejecter
America the Beautiful
