“of Montreal” Live at The UC Theatre (Berkeley)

The UC Theatre

Kevin Barnes did not believe they could ever leave Georgia. Barnes arrived in the erstwhile college-rock hub of Athens around 1996, a pop four-tracker in their early twenties with permissive images of Bowie, Prince, and Iggy Pop prancing through their head. Almost immediately, of Montreal became a signal flare for a slowly changing South. Barnes, who will answer to any pronoun you proffer, bent gender and genre through complicated and ever-delightful records, trouble and woe fueling kinetic tunes of radical incandescence. But there is only so much energy one can expend on the vanguard, living in a town that often felt like a frat house suffused with regressive notions of race, sexuality, and decency. It all exhausted Barnes. They had, however, built a life there-a home, a family, a studio, a reputation. Could Barnes ever really exit?

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