Of Montreal @ Sokol Underground....and other stuff

*Quick Note: In lieu of having an enlarged spleen, The Morning Spleen will now be posting 500% more often to offset this extra spleen-ness that seems to be going around. Also because I lack direction in life*

Someone once said to me, "live music," and it was not until a long time ago that I finally found out what that meant. A good musician should be able to play music in such a way that they ignite the audience into a state of being that they weren't in before. It is like the thermal heat that gives a molecule enough energy to escape it's entrapment in the liquid state. There is a sort of flow of interactionism between the performers and the audience that creates a feedback of emotion. It is hard to sing your heart out to an audience that doesn't care (unless, of course, the song is about how some audiences just don't care). It is also hard to keep still when an audience is jumping around in euphoric glee.
   This past weekend I ventured across western Iowa to see of Montreal. As expected, the setlist contained mostly newer songs off of False Priest. It seemed like every song that wasn't from an earlier album just bored the crowd to death. There was very minimal grooving and people just seemed to be holding their position until the next "good" track came along. I think that of Montreal is destined to suffer in their live crowd-interaction, but not by their own doing. Their albums are so obscure that it really must take more time for a person to appreciate it fully. After the gig I was talking with the band for like 45 minutes and Davey told me something similar. He said, "People asks us now to play these songs from Skeletal Lamping and I'm like 'back during the Skeletal Lamping tour, we would be giving 120% and people would be fucking bored.'" 
   There were times when I was bouncing around the room in my own world and I actually had to stop and make sure people werent pissed at me, especially during Famine Affair and Girl Named Hello. On the flip side of this, a midset Rejector actually blew the crowd out of the water and really shook up the house from then on no matter what they played. For everyone else there, that became live music. That induced the feedback. I just regret that it didn't happen earlier. 


I have to get in one more big note, a more personal one.
The set is over. The band leaves the stage while the audience screams for more. All previous setlists I had looked at pointed at a pretty killer "michael jackson medley" encore to ensue. The band takes the stage. It is still dark. The first note.
There has been one of Montreal song that has soared above all of the rest in my life, one of my favorite songs of all-time. A song so powerful to me that I actually had placed it out of the realm of possibility at this show. But in a wave of eerie screeching and a driven bassline, The Past Is A Grotesque Animal emerged in all of it's glory, in all of it's affliction.