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Gig Review

Of Montreal
Brighton, Digital

Article written by Alex S - Feb 2, 2009

Of Montreal

Funk - “body odour or the smell of sexual intercourse”. The love that dare not speak its name. The mutant brother of disco, the wayward child of the blues. Fashion in the foreground, sin and misery behind the curtain. Of Montreal’s master class in funk was redolent of a more louche and glamorous era. I’ve no idea what seasoned Montrealians made of this but frankly I didn’t care. It was marvellous.

To be expected with a nine album band for whom one only has the last two chapters 'Hissing Fauna, are you the destroyer?' and ‘Skeletal Lamping’ some of tonight’s songs were unknown. It didn’t matter. Of Montreal’s sophisticated funk blended old and new into a melting pot of eroticism, driving bass lines and riff-orientated danceability straight from the world of George Clinton’s P-Funk. Not that it was possible to dance. Clearly the revamped Digital (for those who care, the seminal ‘Zap Club’ on the seafront) needs to maximize revenues in order to pay off their £1million sound system (which ironically took three songs to get up to speed). But they had clearly oversold, as they had when I saw MGMT earlier in the year, and being treated like cattle is no way to experience songs made to move to.

Kevin Barnes lyrics are filthy. ‘Ladies of the spread’, ‘that’s where she queered me out’, ‘I want you to be my pleasure puss, I wanna know what it feels to be inside you’ just a few of the gems from the evening. There is no doubt Barnes is his own man. Indeed, so singularly does he tread an idiosyncratic furrow, it sometimes seems as if he is in a world of his own. The frilly-fronted, big shouldered purple sartorial statement he made halfway through the set a prime example. As was the butt-clenchingly annoying ‘pop theatre’; making the band don monkey-tiger-lion-otter (or was that an eel?) heads was ‘disappointing’. These challenging costume changes and colourful performance made for a visceral live experience. But hearing the ‘Gallery Piece’ s thrillingly choppy guitar intro and ‘Id Engager’s thumping disco pulse more than made up for such oddities. Coolest man on the planet had to be the guitarist, resplendent in his dodgy ‘Devo’ shades striking cool poses with his axe whilst the rest wriggled and writhed like big talcy babies.

Someone wrote that Of Montreal’s latest signature is the “fusion of ostensibly gloomy lyrics with bouncy, upbeat melodies and hooks.” That might explain the encore, Nirvana’s Smells like Teen Spirit; a rather original bridging of the grunge-gay disco divide. It’s beyond me why they would pay homage to such a bunch of omphaloskepsis whingers but incredibly many seemed to enjoy it. Tools... Despite this odd finish, a fantastic evening of sex and drugs and funk and soul. Beautiful.

Links:
http://www.ofmontreal.net