Concert Recap: Of Montreal @ The Howlin’ Wolf

Hipsters packed The Howlin’ Wolf on Saturday night to see Of Montreal, the prolific, Georgia-based indie rock group of songwriter and provocateur Kevin Barnes. They didn’t appear to mind that Pitchfork had crapped on the band’s latest album, Paralytic Stalks, released last month. They opted for Barnes and co. over Foburg Fest, the third-year indie music festival that was in full swing on the other side of the French Quarter. They love this guy, and many of them sported face paint and American Indian feathers inspired by past Barnes getups.

The band opened with the first four tracks off Paralytic Stalks, in consecutive order. It’s kind of a stale way to start a show, playing a bunch of stuff off the new record in album order, but the tunes on the band’s latest LP are so densely packed with instrumentation and electronic textures, and they veer so wildly from place to place, that it helped to hear them live in a familiar context. It helped too that the band sounded crystal clear. It felt odd that songs this complicated (and convoluted) came off so clean in concert, but so it was.

The crowd responded warmly to the new material, but the room’s excitement level increased notably when the band lit into

Thanks for subscribing to the CTayLee.com RSS Feed! Let's connect on Facebook and Twitter.