Of Montreal - 3/03/2006

I went to see Of Montreal play at the Starlight Ballroom last night with conflicted expectations. Two trusted friends gave me their divergent opinions on the Of Montreal live show. Tom! Trusted Friend # 1 seemed a bit disenchanted with the whole Of Montreal sound as of late. He caught them last time they came to Philly which was also the time I drove all the way down to the Church and paid 12 dollars to park and the show ended up being terribly sold-out. Kathy! Trusted Friend #2 just saw Of Montreal not too long ago in St. Louis. She revealed the information to me that Kevin Barnes (the lead singer of this superpopgroup) cheats on his wife! Is in the middle of a messy divorce! And slept with some freshman chic at Kathy's school. BUT! Kathy enjoyed herself to a ridiculous degree. She enjoyed Kevin dancing in a wedding dress and the whole show and being outrageous and partygirlish and rubbing glitter off Kevin's face and on to hers. I so cannot picture her in this situation, but if she says it's true, it must be true!

So, the opening bands were terribly mediocre. (this "terribly" word is running rampant through my spoken and written communication, it's gotta go) The Lilys - I only caught half their set because I was trying to catch my mom opening her birthday presents before I headed down to the Starlight Ballroom. Which, by the way, is a really nice venue, I hope r5 continues to put more and more shows on there. It's almost as intimate as the Church except ... Pabst ON TAP! (sike, I don't know if they have Pabst but definitely a bar).

To say the very least, the performance turned into an all out dance party. I am assuming it is more advantageous for Of Montreal to play a place like the STarlight, because of all the disco lights and such as opposed to the Church where it's just plain old lights and faux wood paneling. They closed with "The Party's Crashing Us Now" and the place was more insane than Dance Club # 8762 on any random weekend. Everyone was dancing, even the kids with arms crossed were bobbing their heads a bit. It was cool.

So, who cares how their muscianship was, they had fun and I had fun and I think 75% of the audience had fun, so, mission accomplished.