of Montreal @ Field Day

Victoria Park, London - 9 Aug 2008

by Dan Worth

Smashing set of music and stage interaction

"It clearly meant a lot to Barnes who proceeded to smash his guitar to pieces on the stage. It’s a rock and roll cliché rarely seen anymore, but watching a performer visibly vent his frustration through the violence of the act took the performance to another level."

First off, full marks to the people who book the acts for Field Day for selecting a band that wouldn’t cause the day to sell out but underlines the diversity the day is aiming for. Furthermore it was a decision that paid off with a large turnout for the American outfit. They’re not actually of Montreal.

In return of Montreal gave the crowd a show to remember, with weird and wonderful stage characters joining and interacting with the band on stage. We had a fight between a man in a tiger mask and a man in a gold sequined facemask, someone  covering themselves in shaving cream before leaping around during the chorus of ‘She’s A Rejecter’ and lead singer Kevin Barnes borne aloft on a man's shoulders (also in a facemask and all-in-one bodysuit), during ‘Cato As A Pun’, with its fusion of jazz-rock guitar licks and fuzzy bass line. These stage interactions didn't take anything away from the music though, instead they added to the set, giving it a hugely enjoyable mix of showmanship, talent and charisma. Coming after the sparse (but effective) stage performance of Laura Marling it was a fantastic shift in tempo and performance.

They played one new song but otherwise kept to a tight, intricate set of some of their most well known work, especially from 2007 album 'Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?'. They ended with the truly brilliant, ‘The Past Is A Grotesque Animal’ – even the song title, like all great art, is epic. Lyrically it is a masterpiece, aiming at nothing less than covering an entire range of confusing and conflicting human thoughts and emotions and succeeding at every turn. The music is equally compelling, a mixture of chugging bass and keyboard, vocal harmonies and crunching guitars that hold your attention for 11 minutes before looping out in a series of Dr Who style synth keyboard lines.

What’s more the words clearly mean a lot to Barnes as, come the end of the song, his hand covered in blood from a cut he had received from his guitar, which too was covered in blood, he proceeded, certainly spontaneously, to smash his guitar to pieces on the stage. It’s a rock and roll cliché rarely seen anymore, but watching a performer visibly vent his frustration through the violence of the act took the performance to another level and underlines that the lyrics, dark, twisted and grandiose, have serious meaning behind them to their singer.

For a piece of stage catharsis it was quite in contrast to the fun, playful nonsense that had come before, and there was almost a palpable sense of shock in the audience at the destruction. It would be churlish to believe it was rehearsed (you'd be disappointed if it was), and it underlined the power of live music to continually entertain, surprise and shock.

You don’t see sets like that very often.
John said on August 26th 2008 [report abuse]

<3

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