Of Montreal, 08 May

Of Montreal?

Of Montreal, fronted by Kevin Barnes, came for a quick last minute-curated visit to Paris, and gave something like a one and a half hour concert at Point Éphémère. The band from Athens, GA – though coming off at a slow start – successfully managed to make the crowd drip out of sweat (The party’s crashing us) towards the last four or five songs, and that not just only because of the otherwise close to unbearable heat of Paris this evening. New songs from the album ‘Hissing Fauna’ were mixed with mainly the strongest tracks from the past, for example Oslo in the summertime, I was never young, So begins our alabee, all from the brilliant 2004 album ‘The Sunlandic Twins’.

Of Montreal also put on a somewhat unique and refreshing stage show, with men wearing wolf- and Venetian masks, crawling around on stage, sitting on top of each other waving girlandes-sticks, dancing under silvery glittering cloaks and so on in equally fascinating manners (upon being asked of the thought behind it all, Barnes replies, performatively, that ‘more than anything else, it simply looks cool’), effectively or not, placing the crowd in what appears to be an absurd dream.

tmG