Of Montreal @ the Dise

I would never have thought to go see Of Montreal this past week, though I knew they were playing two nights in a row at the Paradise. Luckily I have a friend who wanted to go and another friend who got us tickets, so I found myself in the audience Tuesday night.

I've had Of Montreal on my iPod for quite some time, recommended by various people whose taste I respected to varying degrees, but I couldn't sing along to or probably even name a song. Considering this I kind of assumed that I must have listened to the music when I first acquired it and found that I disliked it, because I always skip right over that name in my artist list. But I'm going to have to give them another shot (next time I'm bored with all the stuff I know I like--it happens more frequently than you'd think).

The show was actually pretty fantastic. The band was solid, all the musicians were good performers (by which I mean they were dancey and seemed engaged), and the singer in particular did some pretty awesome stuff with his voice that was really cool to hear live. And though I think that that should always be enough, there was plenty of other stuff going on, presumably in case the audience got bored, or forgot to take their psychedelics before leaving the house. To begin with, (some of) the band members were wearing pretty interesting attire. But their costumes were bland compared to the weirdness the many other performers were sporting while running on and off the stage and acting out strange scenes I wasn't sure I wanted to understand. Then there was the projected video on four screens behind the band. It was sometimes changing patterns, sometimes live footage. Sometimes synced with the music, sometimes not. And this was all in addition to the pretty sick lights show they had. I felt a little dizzy at times, and once or twice had to look away, but I was NOT bored. And I think that I will NOT be trying acid ever.