It would be a cop out to call Of Montreal (actually from Akron, Ohio) merely a carnival or circus. The adjectives "deranged," "mind-fucked," "psychotic," "freaky," "theatrical" or "nutty" need to go before those nouns, but they don't explain cross-dressing, ass-wiggling, disco/funk-loving god/goddess ringleader Kevin Barnes.
As a heterosexual who has said in interviews that he desperately wanted to be a gay man, it's nearly impossible to pin Barnes' mental fusion of gender-bending Haight Asbury '60s hippie-fizz-Cockette rock theater to a single sane brain. Drugs may have helped, but after 15 years of fronting America's wildest glam-arts collective, plain old-fashioned wear-and-tear—or, more likely, burn-out—surely would have been a factor. However, on the tail end of the False Priest tour and the immediate release of the new thecontrollersphere ep (both on Poly Vinyl Records), there was nary a suggestion of fatigue on the stage of the Vic Theater May 5—which, sad to say, was unfortunate.
With an Of Montreal show the music tends to get pushed aside, and these spectaculars resemble a free-for-all where 10 ideas get thrown on the wall at any given minute with the attitude that something/anything will stick but that's part of the fun. Unfortunately, for this go-round it was no fun at all and a big hunk of the problem was that the "something/anything" approach truncates False Priest as an album. It's not for a lack of ideas, but perhaps too many, and Barnes and Co. seem not to know how to put them across and make them stick. One of the best tracks here, "Coquet Coquette," has the airiness of a summertime single but the rhythm section plods on endlessly turning what was catchy into a dirge. "Our Riotous Defects," (with a cameo by Janelle Monea) a valentine about the ultimate dysfunctional romance ("When I first met you at that al-anon meeting..."), is reminiscent of Prince at his goofiest ("If I Were Your Girlfriend,""Head") but Barnes' spoken/sung vocals lack the sense of drama or humor to put it across. As it goes on and on, False Priest—with all its aural business—never catches fire or sticks in the brain and, at first listen, it's pleasant enough but leaves less of an impression on repeated listens.
So was this show any different or better than any other that I'd seen from Of Montreal? Well... There were hearty helpings of False Priest ("Coquet Coquette," "You Do Mutilate?," "Like A Tourist") but the best of the set came with the opener; the brand-new "L'age D'or" was all riffs and percussion wrapped around the bluntest hook. "Sex Karma" showed that Barnes still has his sense of smutty wit ("I know that you want to swing/Run and touch my everything/'Cause I look like a playground to ya, playah...") but by song number six, "Oslo in the Summertime," the something/anything approach that killed the album dampened the show. If False Priest suffered for being crammed with too many ideas, onstage—where one could hope it would finally ignite—the opposite happened while that stage got awfully cluttered with more and more "stuff." Dancers in fat suits and gas masks (think of the recent Sucker Punch movie), pig outfits, wrestling gear, wedding gowns, underwear and superhero get-ups flooded the stage just after drummer Matt Chamberlain (in skin-tight sequined black tights, no less) got from behind the drum kit and serenaded the crowd with a smirking "My Funny Valentine." As each and every song sounded exactly like the one before it and I was forced to ask myself, "When is it going to be over?" By the time "Our Riotous Defects" and "She's a Rejecter" closed out the set I couldn't exactly say that I'd been entertained--more like assaulted.
For something with a bit more gravity and fewer frills, "new group" Candy Golde almost runs to the opposite extreme. A supergroup of local musicians, the band and its debut (Ten-O-Nine Records) feel like an out-of-control frat party perpetrated by a bunch of suburban dads. This, actually, is hardly a bad thing and might be healthy over all for the music industry if other rock vets got together and ripped for the hell of it like these guys do.
Guitarist Rick Rizzo (of Eleventh Dream Day, Palace, Smog, and by day a member of Columbia Colleges music faculty), bassist John Stirratt (Wilco, Uncle Tupelo), Nick Tremulis (The Nick Tremulis Orchestra, WXRT's Eclectic Company) and Bun E. Carlos (drummer for Tinted Windows, Cheap Trick, and purveyor of his own brand of coffee) have reputations that go back decades but Candy Golde is way more than the sum of its parts. Granted, these are some pretty exceptional parts but this shindig is more about having a hardcore good time, plain old rocking out and the love of the music.
Candy Golde's opener, "The Hold Steady," is just that: a straight-up rock/funk strut that feels like the point blank exhaust of a 747 at take off. "Galvanize Me" is of the same stripe, where Rizzo's guitar-playing could slice steel while Tremulis' vocals chew it up. Unfussy is the best way to describe the EP, but the curveball here is the band's cover of Paul Simon's "Boy In the Bubble." Where Simon seemed to adore melding words and music together by tripping them delicately off his tongue in a near seamless stream ("...the bomb in the baby carriage was wired to the radio...") Tremulis plows through all that delicate finesse like he's going through a phone book with a chainsaw. I can't say I love it as much as the original (at least not yet) but I can say it's certainly left an impression and I have to wonder what Simon would think of all that bamma-lamma.
This I swear is true. Approximately one minute after New York performance/rock artist Bitch closed her show at Schuba's with her "Pussy Manifesto," it was announced on live television that Osama Bin Laden was confirmed dead. Was it a mere coincidence or a demonstration of the power of the female eros? Me, I'll take the later.
In town for the close of a national tour with no particular agenda apart from entertaining, Bitch was all bluster, bitch-like wit and reminiscences. I had no idea that she was a Chicago girl who graduated from DePaul (where she met her former partner, bongo banger Animal), where she grabbed an MFA in theater and studied violin under Andrew Bird at the Old Town School of Folk Music; however, as amusing as all of that was, it was pretty beside the point. This was an evening of snarkiness, female empowerment and jolly queerness served up with a smirk—which isn't to say that the evening didn't have it's more grounded side. "Love Was A River" was packed with epic emotions and vocal drama while "Open Up," a song composed for an ongoing project on Ferron, topped it for sheer pizzazz. "O'Packaging" and "Traffic" were even better and if Bitch didn't have such a vivid personality to go along with all her talents she'd be a hell of a diva.
Bitch, of course, would ask, "Why be a simple diva when you can be more?" For me, the funniest bit in the show was a half-written song about the resemblances between gay women and their daughters and she protected herself by cracking, "...well, it's just an observation." But the chorus, "Dyke mom/Dyke daughter--it's in the water...," had, how can you say, a decidedly stubborn ring to it. And then there was the classic "Pussy Manifesto" which has by this point gone beyond feminism or gender politics and taken on a whole new life. So was this a "show" show or simply a chance to hang out with some of the coolest people in the universe(Jesse Alexander of the Homoticons was in the house)? Didn't matter really, it was too much of a great time.
