Of Montreal @ 9:30 Club
Barring a last-minute Flaming Lips concert announcement, Of Montreal probably just put on the most visually overstimulating, over the top, batshit crazy fun concert to have hit D.C. this year. Nothing was too sacred for Of Montreal, as dancing Buddhas wore gold lamé, Greek statues shook their genitalia and John McCain's mug was pictured uttering the famous line "Here's Johnny!" from The Shining in large cartoonish letters. It's no wonder that the escapism of the Athens band sold out the 9:30 Club.
This tour is to last year's shows as upcoming (but widely leaked) release Skeletal Lamping is to last year's Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? Flamboyant frontman Kevin Barnes wrote and recorded the deeply personal but wildly multilayered Hissing Fauna in a solitary and depressive stage after a separation from his wife. The stage show for that tour mirrored the album's extravagant yet homemade feel with a setup that looked like a hyperactive school production. Pink angel wings, ladder turned skirt, foam lobster claw and other similarly amateur stage props moved onto and across the stage with the help of the traveling stage crew, the CCAA Booty Patrol, with complete disregard to their obvious presence.
For Skeletal Lamping (a line taken from Hissing Fauna track "Faberge Falls For Shuggie"), the production is anything but skeletal. Barnes and co. have taken the personal (and unabashedly sexual) lyrics, colorful album design and layered disco inspired indie pop to its logical extreme… and taken the stage show right along with it. While some of the costume changes still appear before our very eyes, there’s now also a rotating screen doubling as a projection for costume and set changes, drum kits on ten foot high risers and lavish period costumes mixed in with the now familiar golden faces and black bodysuits. The stage show, like the album, delves more into the decadent hedonism of their sequined frontman (or at least of his alter ego, Georgie Fruit). So while there's still an element of homemade charm to the set, the performance was at once more revealing, but less personal.
Swedish quintet Love Is All warmed the crowd up nicely with their punchy indie pop. Singer Josephine Olausson bounced up and down, giving a sharp vocal delivery over the top of melodies that ranged from fast discordant Gang of Four-esque riffs to more sugary fare that brought to mind the B-52's, if the B-52's had a sax. Their saxophonist, Ake Stromer, is apparently a fan of Flock of Seagulls, so the band did a much brighter cover of "I Ran (So Far Away)", and Olausson described the '80s new wave staple as a band "...with better haircuts. Or at least they did. They probably have no hair now."
Perhaps it's no surprise that the crowd's strongest reactions were to Of Montreal's older songs, with which they'd spent more time. The floor of the 9:30 Club shook as patrons bounced to songs like Hissing Fauna's "She's A Rejector", "Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse", Satanic Panic in The Attic's "Disconnect The Dots", and The Sunlandic Twins' "Wraith Pinned to the Mist (And Other Games)". Apparently Barnes has reconciled with his decision to "sell out" that song to an Outback commercial since "Wraith" was noticeably absent from many 2007 setlists.
Whether this audience reaction is a testament to the quality of work from Skeletal Lamping, as opposed to their earlier albums, is yet to be seen. Even unreleased tracks like the sexually explicit "For Our Elegant Caste", where Barnes explains that he "takes it both ways," and show opener (and album closer) "Id Engager" garnered some sing-a-longs. Still, when they couldn't rely on a sing-a-long, they relied on theatrics. Kevin Barnes had no fewer than 12 costume changes (including red body paint and shaving cream among others), and the Booty Patrol showed up as country western duelers, 1950s family members, golden buddhas and executioners. Toward the end, they performed a very elaborate hanging of Barnes in a pink bathrobe. If nothing else, it certainly kept the "wtf?" factor up relatively high, and kept the audience (which included Chris Cooley) watching.
They ended the show with two familiar tunes, after a chant led by new drummer Ahmed Ghallab of "What do we want?" "Pizza!" "When do we want it?" "Pizza!" "Gronlandic Edit" and "Requiem for O.M.M." had the audience jumping, singing and cheering again and Kevin Barnes left the stage saying, "This was fun!"