Of Montreal, Monae, and Bowie

Last night, after two days of long sleep to recover from The Juan Maclean's show on Friday in New York, I went to see Of Montreal performing at Toad's Place here in New Haven (shoutouts to Molly and Mimi who I saw there). Had to get a lot of work done, so I missed the beginning of Janelle Monae, who was opening. When I arrived, she was in the middle of a song, while also finger painting on a canvas onstage. Her band was rocking hard, cranking out funky space-soul. While I'm generally loathe to make comparisons like "So and so is like the female ______," Monae really is like a female cross between Prince and Cee-Lo, and I don't think that's a comparison she'd be offended by. Some really cool tunes I hadn't heard before, and she can crowd surf like a pro.

I was expecting Of Montreal's show to be outlandish and trippy, but I wasn't quite prepared for the opening, as their stage crew, dressed in alien/gas masks, came onstage around a Christmas tree. Everyone got a gift box, containing a mask, except the last one, whose box contained poison gas. That goes down as Exhibit A in my case against doing any hard drugs if you're going to see Of Montreal. That would freak me out something major. The crowd went wild for the band, and they didn't disappoint. Playing hard and loud, with lots of crunching guitars and rippling bass. Kevin Barnes was his usual charismatic self, wearing an outfit that looked like it was stolen from the costume room on the set of Purple Rain.

'Gronlandic Edit' was by far the best-received song of the night, and the most fun. Such an awesome groove. 'She's A Rejector' was also very solid. The night was closed out with a two-song encore, the second of which brought Janelle Monae back out onstage for a duet with Barnes. Fittingly, given the two artists' influences, the song they chose to sing together was David Bowie's 'Moonage Daydream,' off the best Bowie album by far (in my opinion), 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders of Mars.' With two psychedelic, future-funk acts on the night, it helped show just how much artists like Bowie, Prince, and Parliament Funkadelic have give to music, and how their crazy spirit is still alive.

Of Montreal - Gallery Piece (Minitel Rose remix) [divshare]
Of Montreal - Jimmy (MIA cover) [divshare]

You can get Of Montreal's latest album, 'Skeletal Lamping,' here and you can snag Janelle Monae's album 'Metropolis' here.

Bonus: The incomparable David Bowie performing 'Moonage Daydream' in 1973


And Janelle Monae performing 'Sincerely Jane'