I had not seen of Montreal live before and the response from many friends when I told them I was seeing them live was “Who?” As a result I was quite surprised to find Koko pretty full with a crowd who knew all the words to all the songs.
I had heard that Of Montreal put on an interesting show. These rumours were proved true as the projector started up, displaying some rather weird film of toys, retro computer images and treated footage of the crowd. The seven piece band came on stage with painted white faces, then frontman Kevin Barnes bounded on wearing a purple bandana and a truly horrible patterned jacket.
Throughout the show Barnes was menaced by a number of strange creatures making me feel slightly like I was watching Peter Davison era Doctor Who. During the opening number there was a large prawn like monster armed with two machine guns shooting the crowd (NB- they weren’t real machine guns).
Of Montreal
The bulk of the set was made up from their new album “False Priest” and from 2007’s “Hissing Fauna, are you the Destroyer”. Barnes is an entertaining frontman spinning around, pogoing and during “Bunny Ain’t no Kind of Rider” he was chased around the stage by two scary silver dancers with blank faces and wings.
The band were very tight with special mention to the drummer- there was a section when the whole band were playing percussion, which sounded quite heavy but was pretty hypnotic. During “She’s a Rejector” there was a guy onstage trying to escape from a straightjacket (he managed it). The overly theatrical nature of the show could have become annoying but personally I found it very entertaining. A man in a weird chessboard costume and another with a massive orange head crowd-surfed while we grooved to the likes of “Coquet Coquette” and “Heimdalsgate like A Promethean Curse”. In contrast Barnes had changed into a rather boring grey hoodie by this point.
The encore was a monster length “The Past is a Grotesque Animal” which was amazing, the audience all very much in the zone. A great night and if you’ve not seen them before you really should.
9/10
by Barnaby Salton
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Hoorah, found your review! Tremendous gig, tremendous company! It really did get better and better and I still can’t quite believe they played “The Past is a Grotesque Animal” at the end – wonderful. 😀