Kevin Barnes Suffers For Fashion

By name alone, Of Montreal doesn’t seem to promise much other than some good indie/lo-fi fare with a flair for poppy bridges, yet if one takes a quick glance at the title of their newest release, Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, boasting track titles such as “Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse” and “A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger” one knows that this is no ordinary band. With titles as pretentiously wonderful as these, it’s no small wonder to be expecting the literate witty lyrics usually related to Thom Yorke and Rufus Wainwright. Are you the destroyer, indeed.



As the curtain rises, the audience is treated to a plethora of colorful set pieces: a curious podium announcing “George”, projection screens, shimmery cloth laid carefully across the drumset, and a Tigersaur from which the fantastically Freddy Mercury-Bowie-Frankenfurter-esque Kevin Barnes emerges to the pulsating beat of “Disconnect The Dots”. Clad in a form fitting spandex suit (white pants, green pockets, green shirt, white collar and cropped cape), Barnes struts around the stage in his patent leather knee high white boots with all the confidence of Nancy Sinatra.



His equally wonderfully clad band mates sway their hips, pump their arms, and sing-a-long to the dance-y pop/indie songs from their latest release, enjoying every minute of it. Bryan Poole, in his Gestapo gear is the perfect foil to Barnes’ traipsing while Jamey Huggins in her sequined vest, tutu, purple leggings and white ankle boots manages to make playing multiple keyboards and stealing the stage from Barnes look like mere childsplay. This doesn’t hold for long as Barnes disappears during an extended song intro, only to reappear having donned what is best described as a floorshow costume from Richard O’Brien’s wildest fantasy. Platform shoes, thigh-high fishnets, red hot-pants and freshly re-applied lipstick completed the costume as one half expected to hear high start a glistening falsetto-ed version of “Rose Tint My World”. After this came the change into a 60’s Go Go inspired dress and the glorious return of the patent leather boots followed by a Mardi Gras inspired Dress complete with a ladder from which to perform upon the ever so fantastically roller disco worthy “A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger”.



The show was absolutely fantastic, completely devoid of the standard hipster kids trying to hard to look like they belong, thus giving way to the comfortably clad jeans and t-shirt, chucks/vans, pony tailed shaggy haired college and just post crowd. Piven himself would have been proud to see that not a single person was sporting a t-shirt from their previous tour, yet a good 80% of the crowd was able to sing and clap appropriately to both recent and older songs (the highlight of which being the performance of “I Was Never Young” off of the fantastic 2005 release The Sunlandic Twins). There seemed to be a definite effort to focus on releases no older than 2000 as the general mode de vie of Of Montreal has evolved into the heavily Euro dancehall influenced sound they have mastered quite beautifully thus allowing their spunky spectators to bop up and down in a generally elated manner throughout the entire set.



Well known for their entertaining stage shows, Of Montreal did nothing less than deliver upon said rumors. From beginning to end, and even throughout the feigned “encore” (A general annoyance of mine. We all know they’ll be back, and yet we all still excitedly clap and scream until said encore begins. So why bother? Perhaps its because we feel that our individual hooting and cheering has called them back, that our vocal chords have risen above all others in the throng to call the band back on stage for one last final “huzzah!”) the delivered what is possibly one of the best live shows recently witnessed.