Of Montreal at Terminal West, Atlanta, Halloween 2016

Halloween night, what do?  I know, let's go to Terminal West and see Of Montreal!

First, we had a set by psychedelic rock band Chief Scout, which might have been enjoyable but the insane and incompetent light person at Terminal West pointed a spotlight in our face for their entire fucking set and I couldn't see a thing and were too annoyed squinting and shielding our eyes to enjoy the music.  Here's about the best picture that we got:

Next time, Chief Scout, when we don't have the asshole light guy to deal with.  Meanwhile, in Augmented Reality, a cat somehow got on stage.

Brooklyn's TEEN was up next,dressed for some reason, as unicorns.

We've seen TEEN several times before although this was the first time this year, and it seems like between each show we keep forgetting what a great set they put on, and how confident and commanding a frontperson Kristina "Teeny" Lieberson is.  This show would have been a great night if it ended at the conclusion of the TEEN set, but there was still a lot more to come.  A lot more.

Of Montreal opened with Different For Girls (and ended their set with a short reprise of the same song), followed by Let's Relate, two songs from their new Innocence Reaches LP.  After that, it all becomes kind of a blur in my memory, what with the light show, the stage set, the dancers, the giant opossum, someone dressed as Donald Trump dressed as a human dildo, Kevin Barnes' costume changes, and, well, Kevin Barnes.

    

The audience, needless to say, was worked up into a frenzy, and everyone's sensory processing systems were in a state of high overload.

So how do you end a set like this?  Well, if you're Kevin Barnes and Of Montreal, you do an encore cover of David Bowie's The Man Who Sold The World, which somehow manages to morph into Prince's 1999.  It was that kind of night.  

A couple years ago, when we saw The Orb on Halloween night, we thought we had found the perfect Halloween night show.  Nothing against The Orb, but now that we've seen Of Montreal, we now know better.

Of Montreal

Of Montreal will be performing on Halloween night at Terminal West.

For Hillary

On the day after Hillary Clinton's historic achievement, let's turn to of Montreal for a little perspective.

Top 10 Albums of 2013

I'm well aware that nobody cares what an old man thinks the best albums released in 2013 are - I'm not exactly any band's target audience or some sort of taste-maker - but 'tis the season for year-end lists and all that, so here I go anyway.  It may be self-indulgent, but it's certainly better than listing other people's favorite songs, n'est-ce pas?

All things taken into consideration, 2013 wasn't really all that great a year for album releases in my humble opinion, which isn't to say it was a bad year for music, it's just that so much amazing material was released the past couple of years and many bands spent much of this year still touring behind those previous releases. Some other bands put out some perfectly fine new albums this year that sounded perfectly in keeping with their prior output - no loss of quality at all, but didn't break any new ground or otherwise become the singular recording by which the bands will come to be identified by, which is fine - a band doesn't have to and shouldn't redefine itself with every new album, but those status quo releases, while still quite good, weren't satisfying enough to make a Top 10 list.  Or at least my Top 10 list.

It was a great year for concerts, so I'm not saying the year was without its merits, it's just that you might not know it from the recorded output.  Still, having said all that, there still were several great releases, both from new artists (Savages, Courtney Barnett) and established masters (Yo La Tengo, Joseph Arthur), and much in between.  

So here's my Top 10 list, presented in alphabetical order (it's really impossible for me to say any one of these is better or worse than any other).  It's a pretty predictable list and I don't think there's any surprises here, but here you go anyway:

C Is For Courtney Barnett - A Sea of Split Peas




F Is For Foxygen - We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors




J Is For Joseph Arthur - The Ballad of Boogie Christ




L Is For Local Natives - Hummingbird

M (or O) Is For of Montreal - Lousy with Sylvianbriar

P Is For Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold



P Is Also For Pickwick - Can't Talk Medicine




S Is For Savages - Silence Yourself

U Is For Unknown Mortal Orchestra - II

Y Is For Yo La Tengo - Fade

Hope you enjoy, and please don't be offended if I left out your favorite - it's not that I didn't like it, it's probably that I just forgot to include it!