Of Montreal Put on a Show at Webster Hall
Of Montreal – Webster Hall – June 23, 2026
Most bands come through town and play a show, but it’s a much smaller number that actually put on a show, and it’s aprecious few that put on a show quite like Of Montreal. Kevin Barnes brough the latest incarnation of his long-running psych-pop outfit to Webster Hall on Tuesday night, putting on a hypersexual gender-fluid orgy of sight and sound as only he can. Opening with “Id Engager,” off their 2008 album, Skeletal Lamping, they almost instantly went full chaotic, with kaleidoscopic digital weirdness projected on the screen behind the stage, three figures in bodysuits engaging in quasi-choreographed movements, and the band igniting the crowd with a pulsing rhythm.
Somehow, the night only went up from there, Barnes mixing in new songs and old songs and bouncing around the stage with the same energy he’s been bringing to his live performances for decades. “Bassem Sabry” delivered a dose of disco clavinet while “Blab Sabbath Lathe of Maiden” laid down a hammer of dark bass and synth, Barnes hitting the high notes in counterpoint, the coda going full fuzz and distortion. Throughout the set, the troupe returned to the stage, each time festooned in psychedelic costumes impossible to describe in words. For all the spectacle, it was the music that had the audience moving:
“20th Century Schizofriendic Revengeoid Man” was a heavy rock and roll, the crowd growing increasingly manic while some sort of Middle Earth creatures crisscrossed the stage and a screensaver from hell cast down on the stage, Barnes singing, “Why does everything seem fake? / Why does it all seem so unreal?” to punch home the point.
Of Montreal dropped the fan-favorite “Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider” midway through, everyone in the room dancing and singing along in a frenzy. If you were going to guess a cover for them to play, I’m not sure the country standard “Tennessee Waltz” would have been the top guess, but when Barnes started waltzing with his dancers, dressed in some sort of otherworldly Day of the Dead masks and dresses, it kind of made sense. The encore drew exclusively from the seminal album Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer?, now almost 20 years old, the band building to an extended swell of noise that seemed to consume the entire room in its guitar-bass-keys-drums reverberations, Barnes and Of Montreal proving that they don’t just know how to put on a show, but they know how to end one too. —A. Stein | @Neddyo
(Of Montreal play The Sinclair in Cambridge, Mass., tonight.)
Photos courtesy of Silvia Saponaro | @silvia_saponaro
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