Of Montreal w/ Janelle Monáe @ The Pabst Theater

<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState=&quot;false&quot; LatentStyleCount=&quot;156&quot;> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if !mso]><object classid=&quot;clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D&quot; id=ieooui></object> <style> st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:&quot;Table Normal&quot;; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:&quot;&quot;; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:&quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]-->Of Montreal had been touring with a funk live show well before they became an actual funk band. In their earlier incarnations as chamber-pop and then synth-pop outfits, the Athens, Ga., group traveled with a small circus of performers, eccentric costumes and props, much as Parliament and Funkadelic had decades earlier. Of Montreal already had the Mothership, but it's only on recent albums that they discovered the groove to match. <br /> <br /> <p>The band's new <em>False Priest</em> draws from funk, soul and R&amp;B to the exclusion of their one-time indie-pop hallmarks. Even for a band that's regularly overhauled its sound before, this latest reinvention has been jarring, especially with frontman Kevin Barnes' songwriting making a radical shift from sensitive, nuanced storytelling to freak-flag-flying sex jams. On record, the new sound is amusing only in small doses, as Barnes' manic falsetto and single-minded lyrics can enervate, but on stage the eccentric new material pumped extra life into Of Montreal's already wild live show. <br /> <br /></p> <p>For this latest tour, the band has expanded into an eight-piece funk machine and excised all but their most danceable material from their set. That gave their show Friday night at the Pabst Theater the energy of a disco party, albeit a bizarre one. Flamboyantly dressed in a blouse and neon tights&mdash;think Jennifer Grey in <em>Dirty Dancing</em>, but with louder color sensibilities&mdash;Barnes mostly played the straight (or not-so-straight) man to a parade of puppets, creatures and grotesques that emerged mid-song to fight or hump each other. True to character, Barnes joined in on the latter activity more than once, most memorably during an off-putting segment where he pleasured a pig-masked woman as her captive pig husband watched in torment, one of several scenes that played out like a "Twilight Zone" reimagining of <em>Eyes Wide Shut</em>. <br /> <br /></p> <p>Soul singer Janelle Monáe's opening set was similarly weird, but much more wholesome. Though she has the backing of P. Diddy's Bad Boy Records and a strong, brassy voice to rival Beyonce's, she casts herself as a geek, wearing her hair in a severe, alien pompadour and framing her performance in a dense sci-fi mythology which built on that of her eccentric debut album <em>The ArchAndroid</em>. That she sang of being an outsider and danced like Steve Urkel doing a James Brown impression didn't mask that she's obviously an immensely trained performer, and she displayed remarkable control over her voice and the audience alike. <br /> <br /></p> <p>Monáe performed duets with Barnes several times throughout the night, including during Of Montreal's encore, a fantastic payoff where both bands joined all of the evening's masked monsters for a harmonious dance-off set to a medley of Michael Jackson hits, "Thriller" included. As Monáe's band Hammer-danced to the breakdown of "P.Y.T.," the costumed creatures set aside their differences to party together. In the evening's closest thing to a narrative happy ending, even the troubled pig-people couple reconciled, rediscovering each other's bodies as they grinded on one another in a cage. <br /> <br /><br /><em>Photo by CJ Foeckler </em> <br /></p>