His Heart Beats A Busy Tone

of Montreal @ Music Hall of Williamsburg 4/17/2009

The Past Is A Grotesque Animal / Nonpareil Of Favor / Gronlandic Edit / For Our Elegant Caste / She’s A Rejecter / I Was A Landscape In Your Dreams / Sink The Seine / Cato As A Pun / Labyrinthian Pomp / Beware Our Nubile Miscreants / The Wet Butcher’s Fist aka Coquet Coquet / Faberge Falls For Shuggie / October Is Eternal / Mingusings / An Eluardian Instance / Id Engager // Requiem For OMM2 / A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger / Moonage Daydream (with Janelle Monae)

The current version of the of Montreal concert spectacular: Fewer costume changes/much less nudity from Kevin; fewer musicians/more drum machine songs; brand new skits; greater emphasis on screens. There were three very large screens behind the band, and it had a somewhat immersive effect, akin to being up very close in a movie theater and losing your peripheral vision. This was particularly effective during “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal,” which felt a bit like being trapped with the band inside of an early 80s music video. I was also very fond of the inexplicable Christmas theme for “Nonpareil Of Favor.” Even with so much imagery, a lot of this is a blur in my memory — I mostly remember dancing and singing, and the enthusiasm of the girl I went with, who makes some of the best happy/wow faces anyone will ever see.

of Montreal “Beware Our Nubile Miscreants” (Acoustic Spinner Session Version)

Given how many “nice guys” struggle with sexual jealousy and resentment directed toward insensitive, selfish alpha male types, it seems as though there would be a lot more songs with the subject matter of “Beware Our Nubile Miscreants.” Of course, it’s hard to imagine very many would be as fun, or as self-aware, since it’s pretty clear from the needling, condescending tone that the character is kind of a prick in his own way. He seems to take just a bit too much pleasure in pointing out his rival’s enormous faults, and when he keeps going back to his central complaint — “you only like him cos he’s sexually appealing!” — he seems oblivious to the “no duh!”-ness of that observation. It makes him come off like something out of a Judd Apatow movie, i.e., a fantasy world in which sloppy, neurotic geeks are somehow entitled to sexually appealing women, and women are somehow made out to be the shallow jerks. Nevertheless, it can be very easy to relate to this character — some men are just so incredibly toxic, yet get rewarded with the affection of incredible women, and the unfairness of it all can be maddening.

Buy it from Polyvinyl Records.