Of Montreal: oysteryogurt

oysteryogurt

Of Montreal

Feb 13, 2007 00:46

Me with Kevin Barnes

Tonight was the Of Montreal show at school.

I got to campus at about 7pm and waited for Lyndsay and Natalye to arrive. I was a little concerned about getting into the show with my student ticket, because they were checking OneCards (student IDs) at the door, and I don't have an up-to-date one. As it turned out though, Natalye had some ticket comps, and she got me in without me even having to use my ticket (thanks Natalye!).

The original opening band, Ariel Pink, had cancelled their appearance, so a band called Diddly Squat opened. They were quite unimpressive.

Of Montreal went on a bit after 8:30pm. They opened with Rapture Rapes the Muses, followed by So Begins Our Alabee. The last time I saw Of Montreal--a little over a year and a half ago in SF--I didn't care much for their show ... and for the first part of tonight's set, I wasn't all that impressed. As the show went on though, things got better. They played a decent mix of songs from their most recent three albums, Satanic Panic In the Attic, The Sunlandic Twins, and Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?. I won't attempt to list all of the songs, but they included: Suffer for Fashion, Disconnect the Dots, Lysergic Bliss, Will You Come and Fetch Me, Forcast Fascist Future, Oslo In the Sunmertime, The Party's Crashing Us, The Repudiated Immortals, Gronlandic Edit, A Sentence of Sorts In Kongsvinger, and Faberge Falls For Shuggie. The final song of their encore was Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse, which was cool because it's currently probably my favourite song from their newest album.

As is typical of their shows, Kevin Barnes spent the set dressed quite strangely (he's known for cross-dressing during his performances). It's hard to explain his attire, but you'll be able to see in pictures. During Gronlandic Edit, someone came onstage with a ladder that had a big piece of fabric draped over it (that turned out to be a strange outfit), and Kevin climbed up the ladder and into the clothing (making him appear to be like 12-feet tall) and sung the song. During Oslo In the Summertime, a Norweigan flag was passed around the front part of the audience. There was a big screen behind the band playing random animations throughout the set, and it cut to random clips of the band on stage, too. There were two other screens on either side of the stage showing random pictures as well.

I ran into a few people I knew at the show, including my old roommates Daniel and Joey, and my old classmate Carla. I thought I had seen my former co-worker Noelle going backstage at the beginning of the show, and I ran into her afterwards and talked to her about it. She said she had gone backstage, and asked if I wanted to. She then handed me two backstage passes, so Lyndsay and I went backstage and met Kevin Barnes and took pictures with him (as seen in the main picture for this post). It was pretty cool.

Lyndsay, her friends Nick, Kristen, and I left and planned on heading to Pieces for a bit of pizza, but they were unfortunately closed. We all just wound up heading home.

All in all it was a fun night. The show was quite a bit better than the first time I saw Of Montreal perform, and I'm happy for that. I got a fair amount of video, which I will eventually shrink in size and probably post to YouTube. I can post the links if anyone cares to see them. We did also learn partway through the show that Mirah was playing at Old Ironsides tonight, and that would have been a fun show to see, too. Oh well.

Time to get some homework done.

Pictures follow.