What can you expect from an of Montreal show 14 years into their bizarre career? Well, pretty much for bizarre to be … expected. At first, the collaboration between Janelle Monae and Of Montreal remained as the only link between the two bands, that is, until the show was over. This entire tour’s purpose was seen through the stage presence of both of these festival-headline-worthy acts, as the False Priests Meets the ArchAndroid tour hit Numbers, a Houston venue that is on its gradual descent into one of the city’s oldest, most historic (and equally disgusting) venues.

For the record, we didn’t want to pin the duties of this post to one bear, and seeing as how two were in attendance and Sunbear’s Fun Fun Fun Fest work will become demanding over the next two days, this is a joint venture.

Hit the jump for the recap.

-Sunbear y Grizzly

Expectations for Ms. Monae ran high, especially as huge fans of her debut LP, The ArchAndroid. Hitting the stage to the album intro and a projection screen depicting a moving version of the album cover, the show was off to a more theatrical start than imagined. Little did we know the stage would soon be graced by druids and strange dancers rather quickly. Monae played with the tenacity of a headliner, wasting no time speaking in between the songs in her hour-long set. The quality of her set was outstanding in its own right, as Monae churned through songs off of her debut, but didn’t fail to dig a little further back for “Sincerely Jane” and her cover of “Smile,” the latter of which has become a permanent staple in her live sets.

The shenanigans didn’t stop there. Janelle intermittently chose to sport a cape, did the original (and several variations of) the tightrope dance, had completely silver people dance, and managed to paint a picture of a naked woman’s silhouette. Not to mention, there was a nun with a baton. Bizarre, I know. It’s only up from here, though. There’s no doubt that she is one of (if not the most) captivating female making music right now (take that, Ms. Minaj) and will deservedly see success in the form of a headlining tour in no time.

The Athens, Georgia band’s stage show is no longer the spontaneous debacle it once was, but a calculated cry for shock and outlandishness. There’s no point in deciphering the significance of the fish-headed golems, whose presence signaled the start of Montreal’s set; What’s important is that both Dottie  Alexander and B.P. Helium were both relegated to the stage flanks, and that B.P. wasn’t even wearing his butterfly wings! This isn’t to say the band weren’t in fine form: They were. In fact, they were much more robust-sounding than ever with all the additional players (8, I think I counted). Simply, the theatrics combined with the heavy emphasis on lead singer Kevin Barnes make for, what I described as ”The Imaginarium of Doctor Kevin Barnes Power Hour.”

Kicking things off with False Priest’s “Coquet Coquette,” Barnes exploded out of the gate, all Bowied-out in his campy glitter-rock glory. His voice was the familiar falsetto wail we’ve so become accustomed to, but his presence was something more bombastic. It was always a known fact that Barnes was the mastermind behind the project, but now he’s a full blown wizard rockstar embodying the very essence of his entire band with a mere swivel of his hips. If of Montreal’s sound has flourished with each subsequent album, it would only make sense that Barnes evolve into an absolute glam icon.

The pageant of absurdity reached its apex when, during “Girl Named Hello” (“Annyong!”), Barnes led one of Monae’s lackeys as he threw kosher practices to the wind and dined upon a sexy swine, which in reality was a dancer in a pig mask. Barnes then copulated betwixt two more hogs declaring “there’s plenty more where that came from” before sending them off to their fiery doom (again dancers, dressed as fire). But, what does it all mean?!?

Old fan favorites were played, like “She’s a Rejector” and “The Party’s Crashing Us Now,” but not really old fan favorites you want to hear, like “Wraith Pinned to the Mist” and “So Begins Our Alabee.” The band though, all 8 pieces of it, have never sounded more propulsive: They’ve found a way to take the often sound of the records and transform it into a heartily potent full-bodied sound, sometimes approaching the lavishness of Prince’s “The Revolution.” They were never overshadowed by the sideshow theatrics that paraded in front of them, but they certainly came close.

Sometimes it seems that the soul of the band can be lost in a swirl of daffy costumes and heady performance art pieces, but the exquisite musicianship of the band and Kevin Barnes’ enigmatic persona reel it all back in, displaying a level of talent unrivaled in their genre of music, whatever they decide they want to be at any given moment.

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[PHOTOS]

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[SETLISTS]

Janelle Monae:

Suite II Overture
Dance or Die
Faster
Locked Inside
Smile
Sincerely Jane
Make the Bus
Wondaland
Mushrooms & Roses
Oh Maker
Cold War
Tightrope

of Montreal:

Coquet Coquette
Suffer for Fashion
The Party’s Crashing us Now
Out Riotous Defects
Like a Tourist
Sex Karma
Girl Named Hello
Plastis Wafer
Hydra Fancies
Gronlandic Edit
You Do Mutilate?
Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider
She’s a Rejector
Around the Way
Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse
Casualty of You
For Our Elegant Caste
A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger

encore:

The Past is a Grotesque Animal