Music

Of Montreal’s Downtown return is more modest, but still indelible

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Projecting confidence: Of Montreal brought its trippy road show to town Saturday night.
Spencer Burton

Three and a half stars

Of Montreal October 18, Fremont Country Club.

Even with his pants on, Kevin Barnes delivered one of Downtown’s most memorable sets. Seven years after the Of Montreal leader made national news by performing naked at the old Art Bar, his glam-pop band made its Las Vegas return Saturday night, lighting up the Fremont Country Club with a carnival for the senses.

First up: Barnes’ masked brother David, whose introductory comments included this gem: “I love this town. You can do anything you want to. This morning Donald Trump and I threw a tiger out of a helicopter. And then he took me to an all-night buffet.” Moments later, Kevin Barnes arrived onstage like a bridal Andy Warhol—blond wig, veil, sunglasses, shiny white paintsuit—and launched into Of Montreal’s dancey and sometimes hypersexual catalog.

He got help from a pair of actory stagehands, whose episodic antics infused the show with an extra layer of theatricality. They also aided in the night’s eye feast, which was considerable. Bringing a variety of drapes, circular objects and other props to the stage, the twosome posed in tandem, becoming the surfaces upon which dynamic, colorful projections landed and transformed, into monstrous creatures, shimmery nightscapes and lots more.

The visuals were so extraordinary, they occasionally overshadowed the music, which also suffered from subpar sound, particularly for the set’s first half. The band drew heavily from its two best-known albums, 2007’s Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (six songs) and 2005’s The Sunlandic Twins (three), and surprisingly included only two cuts from the most recent record, 2013’s Lousy with Sylvianbriar. Of Montreal did preview three tracks from its next full-length, including one—the psychedelic “Like Ashoka’s Inferno of Memory,” featuring multiple tempo changes—that sounded like a sure standout. Before launching into the next tune, Kevin Barnes announced, “Arcade Fire needs our help. There’s one Arcade Fire, but that’s not enough. There needs to be more,” and the crowd giggled its approval.

About that crowd, though: There simply wasn’t enough of it. The 1,000-capacity venue might only have been a fifth full, and what could have been a wild dance party in a smaller space (see: the Bunkhouse) felt stifled in the emptiness around us. It couldn’t subdue Barnes, though. At the height of the joyously bouncy “The Party’s Crashing Us,” he tore off his top, and 2007 came flashing back. But on this night, we saw all we needed to remember Of Montreal had done Downtown again.

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