By: Pat O'Brien
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Of Montreal - Photo by Pat O'Brien
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I have not had a lot of exposure to many of the so-called E6 bands (the bands are all former or current residents at Athens, Ga.-based Elephant Six Records); it all seemed so complicated and hard to keep track of. Bands quickly formed and broke up, there was a multitude of side-projects, and the general incestuous (music-wise, I mean) nature of it all led me to mostly ignore it entirely. What a mistake.
The Minders opened the night with their vaguely southern-fried, lo-fi, surf-inspired weirdo pop. They sounded like Sebadoh with a jones for Dick Dale and they rambled through their set like workhorses. There was not a lot of banter between songs, they just got right to it – very blue collar. It seemed to fit perfectly as they weren’t too showy but were very powerful, and it was fun to see the crowd slowly quiet down during the first couple of songs until they had the entire club looking in their direction. I have to admit to not being overly impressed by them, but they certainly were enjoyable and I liked the aesthetic the songs created – music for mechanics to dream about hanging ten to in the middle of the Deep South.
Prior to Wednesday night, I had thought that there was only a fine line between whimsical and hokey. Of Montreal showed me that there is a bright, expansive playground between the two, and they used every inch of it.
Lead singer Kevin Barnes and company calmly walked onstage in dresses and a couple of Sunday church-ready wide-brimmed hats that would have looked more appropriate on the nearest grandmother rather than a group of 60’s-pop revivalists. But as they got going with “Wraith Pinned To The Mist and Other Games” (which is easily the most awkward song title I have ever heard – including the entire catalog of The Smiths), it all seemed to be a perfect fit (no pun intended). This was a Show, not merely a show, that the crowd was witnessing. They proceeded to hold my and most of the all-ages crowd’s undivided attention for the next 50 minutes.
Full disclosure: I was expecting somewhat of a train wreck, musically. While their latest album, The Sunlandic Twins is ultra-catchy and listenable almost ad naseum, there are a lot of studio effects – or what I took to be studio affects – and I was mare than a little worried that the songs were going to lose quite a bit in translation. But the songs sounded as good or better than the album versions without exception; a fact which surprised a few people (I heard at least five comments about it in between songs throughout the night, including out of this writer's mouth) but made me absolutely fall in love with the band over the course of the set.
The music sounded extremely disjointed at first, with the ultra-funky 70s bass guitar as a backdrop to playful, bubblegum poppy guitars and keyboards as well as a slew of effects pedals and microphone trickery. It all melted together into a sonically pleasing, delicious soup with hooks that got trapped into my gray matter for days. The songs went places I never expected them to go, but as they headed to where they were going it never sounded forced or like main songwriter Barnes was being intentionally obtuse or overly grandiose; it seemed so natural that I almost didn’t give it a second thought.
Barnes likes to be unexpected and maybe just a little grandiose, though, I’d imagine, given the two costume changes he made during the set and the heavy raccoon-eyes makeup he sported throughout the night. The searing cover of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” (the umpteenth time the song has been covered from the Main Room stage in the past few weeks) during the band’s encore only gave weight to that thought, and I caught myself feeling a little deflated that the night was over, something I haven’t felt at a show in quite some time.
Location Info:
First Avenue
Artist Info: Of Montreal, The Minders
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