Of Montreal – Oval Space, London 20/02/14

Back when they released False Priest, Of Montreal went completely live. Rebuilding the fragmented electronics of albums like Skeletal Lamping meant that the band had relied on backing tracks, in-ear metronomes and other gadgetry, leaving Kevin Barnes feeling increasingly detached from his own performance. But with last year’s alt-folk influenced Lousy With Sylvanbriair, Of Montreal have come into their own as a bona fide guitar band, especially at home in concert.

It’s not a completely effortless translation. Even by their own standards, last year’s album was a huge lurch into the uncharted and unvisited, paring back on restless, unbridled production, and treating the songs with the subtler touch of live arrangements. At the same time, however, Of Montreal concerts come loaded with certain expectations for spectacle. Tonight, there is an element of disjuncture in trying to reconcile these two things into a coherent set.

They begin with False Priest cut, “Girl Named Hello”, which turns the completely live arrangements to their advantage – all funk guitars and glamour, elevating a mediocre album track to a genuine party jam. But elsewhere, the narrower parameters of their instrumentation cause passages of the set to wander slightly. And ironically enough, it’s the fresh material which doesn’t wear the new sound as well. One or two badly placed mid-tempo songs, juxtaposed awkwardly with more colourful numbers, dent the momentum of the concert a bit, expecting the audience to switch between the two modes at the drop of a hat.

But as ever, the majority of the set is outstanding fun and flamboyance. And as with their opening track, many of the old songs gain strength from the new arrangements, rather than hit limitations. “Gronlandic Edit” drips with glamour as the looped bass run is transformed into a hair metal riff. And the closing encore of “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal” descends into a ridiculous guitar dual of unrestrained excess of the best order – strobe lights and squealing solos stretching far beyond the constraints of its already lengthy running time.

You would never expect Of Montreal to keep still, nor would you want them to. It’s what makes them so vital. So while it’s easy to pine for the theatrical, interactive, life-affirming lunacy of their stage show from around five years ago, the benefits gained by allowing Barnes to indulge his year-to-year obsessions make the loss a bearable trade-off.

Tonight is undoubtedly imperfect, with each new leap forward in sound making a coherent, career-arching set even harder to achieve. (They don’t even bother to try and shoehorn in any of the darkest menace of Paralytic Stalks, for instance) But it’s more than a fighting effort. What the live arrangements prove, more than anything else, is that at the heart of the rainbow swirl is a core of solid song writing, whether in the jingle-jangle mode of fifteen years ago, the Parliament-aping pomp of Skeletal Lamping, or the Bob Dylan-infused talky-guitar of today. And that – combined with their undying sense of fun – is something which continues to hold Of Montreal shows together so brilliantly.

• Photos by Sara Amroussi-Gilissen from Oval Space, London 20/02/14. See full gallery here.