Of Montreal – Live @ Pitchfork

July 20, 2007

Going into Pitchfork Fest, my most anticipated act was undoubtedly Of Montreal. Having already seen the band, my expectations were set very high. And after waiting in the crowd for two hours (although Jamie Lidell was surprisingly great), I was anxious to dance around. Luckily, the band came to impress, and they also came with some of the most bizarre and just plain weird stuff that I’ve ever seen on stage.

The first song the band played was “Suffer For Fashion” and let me tell you, being in the middle of hundreds fans all singing “We’ll all go down together”, is pretty life affirming experience. The first part of the band’s set included other Hissing Fauna faves, “Bunny Ain’t No Kind Of Rider” and “She’s A Rejector” (the latter featuring Kevin’ brother in a jumpsuit tearing up paper and throwing a fit). It also included a new song “Softcore” that seemed to go over pretty well within the crowd. It wasn’t until the 12 minute epic “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal” was played though, that the fun really started.

Kevin Barnes came out during the song (after a short musical interlude) in a Biker Daddy Leather Lingerie costume (very PG-13 of him), and he was joined by a man wearing a fat suit and a head that looked like golden, melted Captain Crunch with pictures of himself stuck on his head. If this wasn’t enough of a visual the Late B.P. Helium pressed himself right up to the subwoofer during the song creating some crazy feedback. By this time, things had gotten too bizarre to handle almost, but Of Montreal somehow topped themselves again with “Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse”.

During Heimdalsgate (my favorite on Hissing Fauna), The fat suit gold-headed man, took a bowl of jelly while Nina Barnes (dressed in a golden catsuit, of course) scooped it out and poured it all over his head. They were even so kind as to scoop some into plastic bowls and hand the jelly out to the crowd (it was too spicy for my liking). Oh yea, the song was pretty awesome too. Some may argue that stunts like this take away from the musical aspect of the show, but as you can probably can expect the band was on fire musically, and the visuals added just the right amount of eye candy to go with the sound.

The rest of the show is a bit of a blur to me, but the band closed with the always fantastic “The Party’s Crashing Us” (with Darth Vader popping confetti balloons over the crowd) and then the band got a bit Kinky with the cover song “All Day and All Night” for encore. I don’t think there’s a more entertaining or just plain wild show that I’ve ever seen. I hope Of Montreal never stops making music and Kevin’s imagination gets even more bizarre. I’ll even accept some more Outback commercials, as long as the band continues to put on live shows like this one.

MP3 She’s A Rejector

Posted by Taylor in Festival, Live