I’ve heard many a tale about Kevin Barnes, of Montreal’s enigmatic front man: that on stage, he is known as Georgie Fruit; that he incorporates skits and costume changes into his shows; that once, he performed nude on a horse in Brooklyn. According to the rumors running through the Middle East Downstairs, though, a nude show is out unless the performance is 21-plus (otherwise, it could count as a sex crime), and this show is full of undergrads and adults alike — all of them rowdy, all of them fans, and, to my delight, many already in Halloween costumes and face paint. The show was a riotous carnival of weird, and it’s hard to know where to begin… suffice it to say that I emerged exhausted, sweaty, and covered in a mixture of confetti, beer, and white feathers.

of Montreal has produced a stunning twelve studio albums since they emerged on the scene in 1996. Their milieu has always included a unique variety of infectiously melodic pop music, full of energy, delightfully complicated lyrics, and a smoothness of production that sounds fresh, not canned.

Their latest release, lousy with sylvanbriar, represents a somewhat radical change for of Montreal, incorporating a moodiness and rock and roll sensibility that reminds me a bit of Deerhunter’s lush and gritty melancholy. It might not be the candy sex party that a record like the Sunlandic Twins is, but it’s a welcome change of pace, and Barnes’s force of personality is more than enough to carry it through.

Surface to Air Missive, from Tallahassee, Florida, opened the show with a sound I never saw coming. I think that Surface to Air Missive might actually be a speed metal band in disguise, because I’ve rarely seen such technical string precision outside of a head-banging context. The vocals are childlike with enthusiasm and pep, and their mix of upbeat rhythms and expansive guitar solos made a perfect pairing with of Montreal’s sound.

After Surface to Air Missive finished up, though, it was as if the world turned upside down and inside out. A small man in a golden Mexican wrestling outfit (apparently Barnes’ brother) came to the stage and whispered into the mic, “Ahh. So many people to lick!” Following a shrieking introduction in which the wrestler described Barnes as “the only man born of penis and not of vagina!!!!!” the band emerged (oddly without Bryan Poole or Dottie Alexander), a merry company in gay apparel: percussionist and singer Rebecca Cash was resplendent in a floor-length silk floral gown, and Barnes wore a princely green velvet cape embroidered in gold over skin-tight white jeans. Before long, the dancers came out, forming bizarre tableau after bizarre tableau throughout the show: a massive white bird with shimmering wings, a gilded mirror that reveals nothing of the audience, gas-masked apocalyptic wights touched by projections of cartoon heroines. In a final stunt, Barnes became a massive cotton monster swathed in sheets and goggles, and emerged, writhing and shirtless, to perform the set’s last number, an unexpectedly boozy, explicitly sexual rendition of old favorite “Oslo In the Summertime.” The whole show was rather sexy, really

— Barnes is slithery and charismatic, a joyous performer, confident in his abilities. Crouching and brushing a hand across a front-row concertgoer’s cheek, he intones in a high falsetto, “I want to be your pleasure puss, wanna know how it feels to be inside you,” before returning to his feet and dancing with his whole body. The show was complete with no less than three bursts of confetti and feathers, and not a few crowd surfing incidents.

The set was full of variety, showcasing numbers from all phases of the band’s evolution, from the new album’s funky head-nodder “Triumph of Disintegration” to the classic “Wraith Pined to the Mist.” I noticed that the raw way the band sounds on the recordings of their new albums is much closer to the way they sound live than any of their previous records would suggest — far from the clean, cartoonish, almost sterilely perfect double-timber of records past, of Montreal is a rock band through and through. This disparity is far from unpleasant, though; I like seeing human beings making these fanciful sounds, especially with such enthusiastic performers and such ecstatic fans.