Seattle Subsonic

of Skeletal Lamping, of Sunlandia, of Montreal

November 22nd, 2008

of Montreal just got back from Sunlandia, they’d been there many times, and brought back many enchanting, orchestrated, pop songs to document their travels across this parallel world.  Except this parallel world is all locked down inside Kevin Barnes’ head, or maybe Georgie Fruit’s.  Confused yet?  Don’t be, it is what it is, except it, it’s of Montreal, and it’s great.
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of Montreal was (is?) part of a second wave of performers to be born out of Atlanta Georgia’s Elephant 6 Collective, which also includes Neutral Milk Hotel, The Apples in Stereo, Elf Power, and the Music Tapes, along with many more amazing fuzzed out folk/pop bands to whom many diverse genres of music now owe some type of imminent homage and definite respect.  The band began as a lo-fi aesthetic pop group that bordered on folk, dealing exclusively with semi-autobiographical psychedlia, but since the early to mid 2000’s has shifted to being an electronic-glam-pop outlet for Kevin Barnes’ (The primary entity behind of Montreal, though his alternate personas have been creeping in lately…) concerns and experiences involving various not so pop-y subject matter, including family problems, depression, and introversion, all with a sugary sheen of production value and impeccable melodies.
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The show started out with noise rock quartet HEALTH, who sounds like a dial up modem multiplied by punk rock and mild hipster stardom, in the best, and most obvious way possible.  Characterized by atonal, heavily affected guitars and blasting drums, the band was well received by the crowd, but seemed like a strange opener for an act like of Montreal.  With only one album worth of material, and of which most people would only remember Crystal Castle’s remix of “Crimewave”, the band opted to, in keeping with their style, play incredibly loud, vaguely melodic drone music, which was not in keeping with of Montreal’s style or fan base at all.  Regardless it was entertaining and the band was obviously into it, which is always a plus for me.  At this point I was psyched.

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And then, just when it was almost too much: Seattle was graced with a fleeting glimpse of Kevin Barnes’.  He is a traveling bard, backed by a group of incredibly talented musicians who have all journeyed through his Technicolor landscape that we can merely imagine through the proxy of a live performance by of Montreal.  Kevin Barnes/Georgie Fruit (his alter ego, an aging black transvestite who had previously performed with an Ohio Players style band) was in full affect Wednesday night, spitting ridiculous pop hooks as fast as the microphone could handle them.  The set spanned crowd favorites from 2004’s Satanic Panic in the Attic (Disconnect the Dots, Ero’s Entropic Tundra) to the most recent Skeletal Lamping LP, which was the primary focus of the show.  of Montreal incorporated wildly diverse imagery to act as an overwhelmingly intricate backdrop for the performance, including, but certainly not limited to, a staged hanging, some type of battle between a pig-man, and a tiger in a tuxedo, cowboy’s brawling in a bar, a centaur, a flute playing satyr, multiple golden Buddha-esque performers, and various permutations of black spandex clad dancers (ninjas?) who helped facilitate at least ten costume changes.  All of this integral to the story, which I’m still attempting to discern, and this was all I could keep track of, I do know however that there was way more to the story, with the band and the stage actors/dancers working as a cohesive entity to attempt to explicate Kevin’s ridiculous, and exquisite fantasy.
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The interaction between the band and the crowd was excellent as well, minimized stage banter, but maximized interaction though connections that can really, honestly, only be expressed as otherworldly harmonic connections between the energy of the band and the admiration of the crowd.  It was strong enough to lead one band member to dive into the crowd without once loosing the driving poppy bass line that is an of Montreal signature.  It drove Kevin Barnes to launch himself, covered in shaving cream, into the front rows of the crowd; it spurred a sing along to a Nigerian folk song.  It brought out the Georgie Fruit in all of us.  The band itself, well, at least the band members playing instruments, transitioned between songs (crazy, sudden, tempo and key changes in a split second) and amongst instruments as easily as Kevin Barnes could slip into a new costume, and thereby a new personality.  Every member integral to the unfolding of the story line, meshing incredibly dense melodies, and contributing excellent harmony vocals (Gronlandic Edit) to Kevin Barnes’ unmistakable jubilant yelp, it must be a Sunlandic vocal quality, while never once loosing any of the energy or sincerity that is so necessary to pulling of a show like theirs.  And, in response to a previous post on this blog: Do people still like Franz Ferdinand?  The answer is yes, of Montreal proved it definitively while getting the crowd hot again with an encore that included “Take me Out”.
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So after all that, here’s the bottom line, of Montreal is an absolutely amazing live act, they put on an unforgettable show, giving us all a glimpse, through the medium of exuberant pop music, into a beautiful dreamscape called Sunlandia, except Sunlandia can’t be that far, I feel like I’ve been walking through it since I saw this show, everything seems a little more colorful, a little more approachable, I guess that’s what of Montreal’s for.