Make no mistake: a Kevin Barnes-led Of Montreal concert is a well-choreographed affair. It leaves not a second to the between songs audience-band banter and request-shouts for which many rock concerts are known and loved. But that cost is more than returned in entertaining spectacle.
Indeed, OM concerts risk being seen as theater whose soundtracks threaten to takeover the performance. But the reverse is actually the case. They are tight live versions of impressively creative yet patently poppy studio productions. The theatrical aspect is an accompaniment that is nevertheless at times pleasantly distracting. The combination makes for such a rich affair that a critic is left pondering the event for days afterward, as if he/she had devoured an enigmatic high modernist novel or witnessed some production of postmodern performance art.
A comparison of concert clips from YouTube suggests that OM concerts depend on what resources their venues offer. The Paris show, like many others, begins with the backdrop of a video projector screen on which parades a psychedelic swirl of images. The motifs suggest an ironic obsession with Christian and Satan-worship—crucifixes and pentads, half-humans and half-beasts. It’s clearly playful, yet in our post-Black Sabbath and –Ozzy Osbourne era, it is hardly provocative, but is, instead, kitschy, even somewhat cheesy.
Its self-awareness is supposed to protect its creators from any critical rebukes. Besides, the overly-analytical critic is left wondering why these motifs? and is tempted to conclude they are some sort of response to a repressive Christian cultural context on par with that which proved so fertile for the medieval wildness of a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Those images are occasionally mixed with the more common big-screen reflections of the on-stage performance, a courtesy for those watching from the hinterlands of the mid-sized venue.
The on-stage spectacle mirrors the cinematic backdrop, or perhaps it’s vice-versa. Scenes of flagellation, dorky parents in vintage seventies apparel berating a teenage son. Staged fights between archetypal heroes and villains. Sexy half-dance routines by actors in Oogie Boogie (Nightmare Before Christmas) or Golden Buddha body socks, who fawn around Barnes and other band members. And characters prowling about peeling off mask after mask.
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