Let’s All Melt Down Together

Of Montreal @ Studio B, 4/14/2007
Suffer For Fashion / Sink The Seine / Cato As A Pun / Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse / Labyrinthian Pomp / She’s A Rejecter / We Were Born The Mutants Again With Leafling / October Is Eternal / I Was A Landscape In Your Dream / I Was Never Young / Rapture Rapes The Muses / Gronlandic Edit / A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger / The Party’s Crashing Us / Bunny Ain’t No Kind Of Rider / Faberge Falls For Shuggie

Karaoke set: Tonight I’m Going To Rock You Tonight (Landshark) / All Day And All Of The Night (Jesse) / Surrender (Eric #1) / Starman (Mario) / Blister In The Sun (Fluxblog contest winners Beth and Cassidy!) / Rocks Off (Howe) / Sweet Child O Mine (Amy and Keith) / Need You Tonight (Michael Showalter) / More Than A Feeling (Paul Rudd and David Wain) / Raspberry Beret (Monica and Brian Raftery) / Suffragette City (Craig Wedren!) / Dancing Queen (two other guys named Paul and David) / Here Comes Your Man (John and Frederick) / Don’t Stop Believing (Griffin, the Stereogum contest winner) / Don’t Bring Me Down (Bubbles — a pretty girl, not a monkey) / Moonage Daydream (Michael S aka Aquaman, the best of the night, by far!) / The Joker (Brendan) / Ever Fallen In Love? (Eric #2) / Cut Your Hair (another guy called Brian — I’m pretty jealous!) / Hot Blooded (the sound guy)

I’d been under the impression that the karaoke part of the night would come before the proper Of Montreal set, but no, that’s not how it went down. Of Montreal played an abridged version of their regular show, and an hour later, they played about 80 minutes of karaoke rock and roll. The karaoke set was a blast, but it was slightly disappointing to see the band disappear into anonymity following a brilliant performance that accentuated their flamboyant identity. Now, obviously, as a live karaoke band, they had to recede into the background, but that’s not really my complaint. For me, it had more to do with the selections — mainly meat-and-potatoes classic rock radio staples that are all obvious (if extremely unimaginative) karaoke tunes, but force the band to completely obliterate their own (decidedly un-macho) sense of style. I would have preferred it if they had cut back on the shlock rock and included more disco, 80s dance pop, and r&b — you know, stuff like Madonna, George Michael, Michael Jackson, Donna Summer, Janet Jackson, Erasure, Depeche Mode, Cyndi Lauper, Salt N Pepa, Human League, etc. Still obvious karaoke material, but not quite so butch.

Of Montreal “Suffer For Fashion” – The thrill of this show for me was getting up to the front of the stage and flipping out like a teenager for the entire duration of the regular Of Montreal set. I can’t possibly understate how much I love Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? at this point in time — it’s starting to feel as though my life in 2007 is scrambled up and scattered through its songs, and every other day, a different track is speaking to me, or for me. It’s a silly thing, but there’s a certain magic in watching a band perform songs that cut so deeply into your psyche, as though hearing the words and feeling the sounds in close proximity to the performers amplifies the potency of the concepts and the emotions, and singing along within earshot of the singer somehow affirms the meaning of the lyrics for both parties. The Hissing Fauna material is ideal for this sort of exchange, especially on a song like “Suffer For Fashion,” which seeks to transforms its personal crisis into a fun communal experience: “If we’ve got to burn out, let’s do it together, let’s all melt down together!” The truth, humor, and goodwill in that line always hits me hard, and it felt even better when I could hear about 20 other people within a few feet of me shout it out along with Kevin Barnes. Most of Hissing Fauna is focused on the “I,” but it’s very important that the album (and most of the concerts) starts off by emphasizing “we,” “our,” and “us.” (Click here to buy it from Polyvinyl.)