To be or not to be
“I know there ain’t no one person that everybody else in the world hates on, wants to die, sometimes I do think it’s me, like I’m in a fight simulator and I am crushing the birth of any potential memory I’m still way erect for you, not going to lie. You cured me of my death anxiety, only took you two tries. The head scene dropped the vaccine, and I’ve chosen a very powerful penance” That’s the opening for False Priest (Polyvinyl Records, 2010), an extract from the song I Feel Ya’ Strutter, in which anxiety towards death becomes a psychedelic expression that overflows venues around the world. Their concerts are an explosion of vitality in contrast to their lyrics which are seized by an eternal to be or not to be.
“You’ve got that kind of beauty that makes people nervous, I know it’s fucked, but before we got together I even hooked up with one of your cousins. Just to feel somehow closer to you. Because I knew like you guys were best friends and you talked everyday and it was thrilling to touch something that had touched you. In my head you were like this goddess, but, in fact, you’re just a crazy girl”. Everything comes under colorful confetti and bohemian lights without thinking where to go but by the way, even in circles. At the end of the album, they release the terrible and accurate conclusion “If you think God is more important than your neighbor you’re capable of terrible evil”. Even in creativity.
An Of Montreal performance involves dancing until the wee hours of the morning hugging a Mexican wrestler and wearing phosphorescent underpants and a water gun with which to quench the thirst of vitality. If you shoot you can kill boredom, if only for a moment. The new album by Of Montreal does not disappoint performed live, rather it expands. They draw horizons that may be short-lived, and even random, but the suns they hide in them light us ‘til an “anything is possible” and if everything has been invented is to invent it again. Their sea waves are chromatic and produce sounds dripping in our mind to draw it differently, more open and permeable to the deep arguments.
Text by Juan Carlos Romero
Photo courtesy of Primavera Sound