A Close Shave: Of Montreal Brings out the Dead

By Julia Reidy and Sara Miller

When Athens, Ga.’s Of Montreal ascended the Chickee Hut stairs before sunset Sunday evening, they looked prepared to live up to their reputation as one of the most ballistic and unpredictable live acts around. As it turns out, they were prepared.

Guitarist Bryan Poole (The Late B.P. Helium) sported his black feathered wings, made famous by the band’s appearance in a T-Mobile commercial last year, a dark angel in a multicolored, striped tunic. They took the stage in various military jackets, crazy hats and electric blue tights to the strains of computerized tribal drums, followed by Kevin Barnes greeting the crowd with a succinct “What’s up, y’all? We’re called Instant Witch.” And, true to his word, they behaved almost like an Of Montreal cover band. At first, the group’s sound came across darker and less poppy than usual, but quickly morphed into classic (if by classic you mean post-2003) Of Montreal fare. Dottie Alexander provided the electronic drone and sprightly keys that lay the foundation in front of and behind Kevin Barnes’s image-heavy lyrics and Poole’s frenzied guitar-playing. Matt Stoessel laid down his essential booty-shakin’ bass lines, one of the band’s trademarks.

The show opened with “Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse” from 2007’s stellar Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?; as Barnes encouraged the chemicals to come on, four or five people sporting black bodysuits and ghoulish masks emerged from the side of the stage and started crawling around his feet, occasionally clutching at his legs as if to pull him down into the depths of despair. Next up was a slowed-down, sinister version of “Oslo In The Summertime,” (from 2005’s The Sunlandic Twins), followed by “She’s a Rejector,” during which the actors reappeared on stage to create mini-scenes that accompanied the story lines within the song ("There’s a girl that left me bitter/Want to pay some other girl to just walk up to her and hit her/But I can’t I can’t i can’t I can’t!"). They froze in unlikely positions for an uncomfortably long four or five minutes, only moving when a band member redirected their limbs.

“We’re going to play something we hope you enjoy and love...that’s not a sarcastic thing,” Barnes said before launching into a feedback-laden cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Shakedown Street,” which begged the question: How many crossover fans could the two bands possibly have? (A: At least one: Paste associate editor Steve LaBate.) Barnes took to the drum kit for a second cover, M.I.A.’s “Jimmy” from her 2007 record, Kala, singing lead from the mic next to his cymbal.

The band debuted a brand new song for the frenzied Langerado crowd, which Barnes introduced as “Tender Fax.” He explained that you just never get romantic faxes from people, and the new song communicated his lament through soulful rock on a par with Young Americans-era Bowie, a promising herald of an upcoming recording.

So all that was a fairly good Of Montreal show. But the final two songs are what everyone will remember. They performed the drone-y synth instrumental “October Is Eternal,” at which point Barnes left the stage and let everyone else carry the groove. He was conspicuously absent as festival crew taped a large sheet of plastic to the stage behind his microphone, a foreboding and puzzling action. The song transitioned into “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal,” which, even on Hissing Fauna..., lasts almost a full 12 minutes. Suddenly, a huge open coffin, covered in flowers and other woodsy detritus, appeared, being rolled onto the stage by the crew and the costumed actors. It was filled with a viscous white substance, two heavily-coated hands gripping its edges. They propped the case upright in front of the microphone, and out stepped Kevin Barnes, completely coated in shaving cream—a zombie, a mummy in personal hygiene products. “At least I author my own disaster,” he intoned, his cohorts popping balloons full of glitter on his head. The song reached its climax, and he began jerking and shimmying in his jiggling shaving cream a little more ecstatically; then with a sudden motion, he dropped to the ground. One moment he was there, the next he was barely visible, limbs flashing intermittently into sight as he rolled frantically around. He then leapt off the stage and into the photo pit, rubbing against the crowd, wailing “Let’s tear this shit apart!” and covering everyone in shaving cream.

When Barnes returned to his place, the set concluded and they left the stage triumphant, tossing copies of their EP Idols, Abstract Thee into the stunned, sated, and shaving-creamed crowd.