To say that Kevin Barnes and of Montreal have worn many hats over the years is a bit of an understatement. There have been hats, surely – including one emblazoned with “#1 DAD” – but the band has always imbued its live show with an unparalleled sense of pageantry, with costumes as varied and wild as the band’s sounds.
Despite the name, the band emerged from Athens, GA in the late 90s from the 2nd home of the Elephant 6 Collective, and has grown in strange trajectories from its indie-psychedelia beginnings, creating an instant classic in the mid-00s classic Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?. Most recently embracing their electronic side with the release of 2018’s White is Relic/Irrealis Mood. It is a structurally conceptual album where every song transforms around the middle into a second track, which sees Barnes citing such disparate lyrical influences as Noam Chomsky and the late Mark E. Smith. White is their fifteenth studio album, and the band’s vigorous output is matched only by their relentless touring schedule, and the experimental extremes of their collective soul.
Wearing literal rose-colored glasses, Barnes takes the stage with an introduction from Lanc, perhaps the band’s most notable onstage character who, for lack of a simpler description, looks a bit like a thespian Deadpool. Though Barnes has opted out of his traditional androgynous costume changes for this tour, the band’s signature sense of the theatrical is alive and well. Their touring crew of dancers and mummers trot out classic of Montreal props like a pair of Chinese dragons and a massive Aztec head. Changing into a massive array of costumes including a dominatrix, a baseball player in a luchador mask, and one getup that defies categorization beyond its massive, inflatable, bedazzled breasts that go crowd surfing to the extremes of the room and back.
The band members themselves get in on the fun as well, with guitarist Nicolas Dobbratz, affectionately nicknamed “Dobby”, and keyboardist JoJo Glidewell wearing vaguely Middle Eastern garb and drummer/saxophonist Clayton Rychlik wearing a bright white duster. Dobby and bassist Davey Pierce opened the night as well as Yip Deceiver, touring in support of their latest EP.
For those who follow the band meticulously, there was plenty to love in terms of the night’s setlist. While it would take multiple hours to sample generously from every disc the band has released, they ultimately drew from nine albums, and to the delight of the crowd debuted a new track called ‘Awful People Too’. The song strikes a similarly danceable tone as the stuff of their most recent record, but with a return to the more jovial and bright sound that characterized earlier records of this decade, such as Innocence Reaches. In celebration of the 15th anniversary of Satanic Panic in the Attic, the band filled the encore with three tracks from that record, including the deceptively charming ‘Chrissy Kiss the Corpse’, a surprisingly prescient ditty about stumbling upon a cadaver and using it for clout.
Throughout the course of the set, the dance troupe has nearly as many outfits as there were songs: yoga moms in golden masks, puffy gorillas, deer creatures, and more, all with imaginative facial designs. It’s no surprise that Barnes, whose music has always dealt with themes of changing personal identity, would employ such varied visages to enhance the performances of his songs. During standout track ‘The Party’s Crashing Us’, an anthropomorphic eagle launches a string of circus balloons into the crowd that dance above heads for the remainder of the set. There’s truly no live show quite like of Montreal’s live show, making them truly a must-see for virtually any music fan, even those unfamiliar with the band’s discography. The sense of joy requires no foreknowledge, except simply how to crack a smile and move to the music.
Photos and review by Collin Heroux
