YRB Magazine

Medieval torture devices. Dancers posing in statuesque form. Solange Knowles. Susan Sarandon spanking a man dressed like a pig, bent over her knee, with a ruler.

That's pretty much the standard for an Of Montreal gig, and Kevin Barnes and the gang kept the surprises coming last night at the Highline Ballroom in New York City. Taking the stage around 10 PM, the Georgia-based outfit kicked off the set with “Suffer for Fashion” after a freak introduction from a dude with a tiger mask on his head roaring into the microphone for a solid minute. The set consisted of standard Of Montreal fare like “Oslo in the Summertime,” “An Eluardian Instance,” “Heimdalsgate Like a Promethian Curse” and “Satanic Panic in the Attic,” during which stagehands brought out a block of green screen that boasted a cornucopia of flowers on the stage projector behind him.

But the most surreal moment of the night came when Susan Sarandon (yes, that Susan Sarandon) came out from the wings during “St. Exquisite's Confessions” and ceremoniously bent a man dressed like a pig over her knee, indulging in a schoolteacher fantasy as she slapped him on the ass with a ruler and pushed up her glasses in frustration. Sarandon later came out during “A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger” and shot streamers from her hands into the crowd, flitting about the stage before Barnes stripped off his shirt and mounted a makeshift torture rack.

The only new song to get some burn during the show was “Teenage Unicorn Fisting,” while the group threw a cover into the set in the 11th hour as the show closer, bringing out Solange Knowles to duet on the classic Jackson 5 tune. A cover of the J5 was the least surprising concession of the evening – and that's saying something.