Concert Review: of Montreal: February 5, 2010

Venue: The Orange Peel,

by: Nick Todaro

Using the term “freak-fest” to describe anything may carry a negative connotation. For the indie quintet of Montreal, this is taken as a compliment in the most outlandish of aspects. Touring in support of their 2008 release, Skeletal Lampings, the band treated their fans to a zany visual spectacle that was sound tracked by a comprehensive live performance that could be billed as one of the best around.

Entering The Orange Peel, it was obvious that as much as the band likes to dress for the occasion, the fans do even more. At one of these shows, the normal dress attire includes glitter, cross dressing, and psychedelic make up. The opening act, of Montreal’s drummer James Higgins acting as his musical alter-ego James Husband, played an intriguingly arcane style of indie pop. His band included two other oM members; keyboardist Dottie Alexander and bassist Davey Pierce on the drums. At one point, Pierce took a break and let oM front man Kevin Barnes try his hand at the sticks.

After James Husband, the crowd became feverish as a group of performers with pig masks on took to the stage and pumped even more elation into them. Led by a tiger in a white ring leader suit, the animals banged on oM’s set up until the band came on stage, kicked them off, and went into a blistering version of The Sunlandic Twins favorite, “Requiem For O.M.M.2”.

Weaving through a heavy majority of songs from Skeletal Lampings, oM threw in a couple of rarities—“Lysergic Bliss”, “Du Og Meg”—and played a new song. Before playing it, Barnes mentioned, “We have a new album coming out around September”, and introduced—I kid you not—“Teenage Unicorn Fisting”. The song began with a heavy James Brown influence and quickly morphed into a dark disco rock song with the catchy chorus, “Don’t treat me like a tourist, let’s stay high on a negative wave”.

Throughout the show, actors dashed on stage to complement the already hallucinogenic feeling of the projectors behind the band. Priests touching boys, masked shadows handling a feather spraying device, and a torture cross all graced the stage to add to the chromatic cavalcade. This extra smidgen of kookiness accompanied oM’s impressive live sound quite well, and continued to provide as a hype factor to an already ecstatic audience.

By doing away with their usual usage of programmed drum loops, oM accomplished a much tighter performance. Compared to prior live experiences, the ensemble seemed much more relaxed and unrestricted by this detail. This also gave guitarist Bryan Poole a chance to slice through the grooving atmosphere with some wicked sounding guitar work on “Cato As A Pun” and “She’s A Rejector”. After playing the popular “Wrath Pinned…” as the first encore, oM busted out a soulful rendition of The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” to close out the anomalous evening.

Setlist: Requiem For O.M.M.2, Id Engager, For Our Elegant Caste, Lysergic Bliss, Beware Our Nubile Miscreants, Du Og Meg, Cat As A Pun, Suffer For Fashion, Mingusings, Teenage Unicorn Fisting, And I’ve Seen A Bloody Shadow, Plastis Wafers, St. Exquisite’s Confessions, Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse, Oslo In The Summertime, A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger, E1: Wrath Pinned To The Mist and Other Games, She’s A Rejector, E2: “Friends Sing-A-Long”, I Want You Back (Jackson 5 Cover)