Dance Party at SOMA Sidestage
Packed house at the SOMA Sidestage tonight for the Of Montreal/The Blow show. I got there just as the Blow took stage. I had not done any research on this band at all so I had no expectations, which is sometimes a good thing. So a girl comes out on stage and does a song acapella with only the tapping of her fingers on the mic as the beat. Surprisingly good. I figured that the rest of the band would come out but nope, Khaela (pronounced k-la) was it. The music was being played from a laptop. Now, normally that would bug me, but the music was not the show. It was all Khaela. She amused us with witty banter (she has a mad crush on Seth Cohen and was playing out a scene from the O.C. like she was playing at the Bait Shop.) And then her quirky dance moves were totally endearing. I mean, she was up there doing her thing all by her lonesome. And it totally worked. People (myself included) just ate it all up. So of course I had to go buy a CD. Khaela came out and sold the merch herself. Cool.
I headed back for Of Montreal and took note of what was on stage. All sorts of props - a huge pencil cutout, a Norwegian flag (frontman Kevin Barnes recorded some of the new album there), a gold monkey, a projection screen. When the band finally came out, they were all in some sort of getup. Lots of sequins going on. They started off with “Disconnect the Dots” which got everyone dancing. A few songs in, if you weren’t dancing, then I don’t know what you were doing there. Kevin changed costume a few times (yes, he came out shirtless wearing those high waisted striped pants and suspenders.) My favorite costume was near the end of the show, where their stage manager brought a ladder out that was covered in this glittery silver sheath. Kevin got underneath the sheath, climbed up the ladder and emerged at the top. He added a pink tutu to his neck and some crazy hat and proceeded to do a song from up there. So yes, the show had a lot of theatrics. But they sounded great and everyone was all about the dance, dance.
On my way out, I asked their sound guy if I could take a photo of the set list (I would have just asked for it, but there were some people around that were giving me the evil eye and I really just needed the set list for blogging purposes, so the photo suffices....)
Great show. If you have the chance to see either one of these bands anytime soon, go forth and dance your pants off.
