Of Montreal in Chicago, March 15, 2007

Space Audities

By Jeremy Ohmes
Published: March 19th, 2007 | 6:00am

The last time I saw Of Montreal was four years ago in a small, subterranean watering hole in Beloit, Wisconsin. There were no drum machines; there were no costume changes; there wasn’t even any glitter or make-up. The electro-party-glam-disco-funk that Of Montreal would eventually morph into was just a glimmer in the architect’s eye. It was simply five people playing perfectly scattered, somewhat psychedelic ‘60s pop. People were dancing of course (I mean how can you not dance at an Of Montreal show?), and the band was anything but static — they jumped up and down and ran in place and traded instruments like school lunches — hinting at some visual high jinks, but the over-the-top theatricality just wasn’t there yet.

Fast-forward to Of Montreal’s sold-out all-ages show at the Cabaret Metro in Chicago and I feel like the small-town kid whose older brother comes home from the crazy big city for the first time in four years. It’s him, I know it’s him, and I hug him and hit him, but he looks like Ziggy Stardust, walks like KISS, and sounds like Saturday Night Fever;. This ain’t your grandma’s Of Montreal no more, and it’s amazing because not only do you have drum-machine-driven, dance-crazy pop that’ll make you shake what your grandma gave you, but you also have a hallucinatory live show that’s as good as anything since the days of David Bowie, the New York Dolls, and Alice Cooper.

Taking the stage in five completely individualized costumes in front of three massive video screens, Kevin Barnes and his usual band of minstrels kicked off the spectacle with “So Begins Our Alabee.” The drum machine instantly jostled the audience into motion and the handclaps took hold, while the bassist — sporting a white suit and a flower-powered straw hat — locked down the bouncy rhythm. The keyboardists passed the bubbling and sighing melodies back and forth as B.P. Helium — sideburns, white robe, feathered shoulder pads, and all — floated six-string accents over, around, and through the whole rump-shakin’ soufflé. Then, the conductor — masked in gold face paint and blue eyeshadow — shimmied across the stage in his first of five costumes (a white, silky kung-fu outfit) and emptied out his high-pitched lungs, “And so begins / Begins our odyssey / And we begin / Begin our odyssey.”

It was an odyssey that took the dancing masses from the green pastures and quirky daydreams of Sunlandic Twins to the icy fjords and not-so-quiet desperation of Hissing Fauna beyond the surreal landscape of Satanic Panic to the Elephant 6 psychedelia of The Gay Parade and back again. The journey included attractions like Darth Vader waving the Norwegian flag, videos of bedridden people, running hammers, flaming Batmen, and ‘80s exercise montages. Our musical chaperone appeared in fish nets and purple short shorts one minute and then in red pants with a glittery cummerbund and skintight tiger shirt waving around an oversize lobster claw the next. At one point, when the pulsing beat of “Gronlandic Edit” kicked in, he climbed a ladder and transformed into a celestial totem pole with a flowery headdress, like something from the page of early—Peter Gabriel Genesis.

The flight of fancy peaked though with the evening’s even more epic version of the epic “The Past Is a Grotesque Animal.” Fifteen minutes long and heightened by whirling, vertiginous drone solos and an encompassing chorus of “ooh-ooh-ooh’s,” the song that no "sane" band would have attempted to play live was the main attraction in Of Montreal's otherwordly excursion.

Shutting down the drum machine and docking the ship with a nod to his glam ‘n fantasy forefather, Kevin Barnes guided the band through a rocking and rollicking two-fer of Bowie — “Starman” and “Hang on to Yourself.” The older folks were amped and the younger ones were blissfully oblivious, but it was the perfect ending to a show that put the spectacle in spectacular; a show that championed the weird and giddy.