Did stunts like this upstage the music? (Photo: Ryan Kearney)

Of Montreal — who, as we speak, is in the Gibson Guitar Lounge in Chinatown, eating lunch with fans — hit the 9:30 Club last night for the first of two shows, launching a nationwide tour on the eve of their new album's release (False Priest, their tenth full-length). The result was weird; on that, most everyone agrees. Was it any good, though? Depends whom you ask. After annoying all six of my followers by live tweeting Sunday night's Surfer Blood show, I took last night off but for two tweets — one being a wish that the band would play "The Past is a Grotesque Animal," the other an attempt to reduce my cognitive dissonance over not attending the Broken Social Scene show at the Warner Theatre. Fortunately, though, the Twitterverse picked up the slack.

@iamverucasalt, who is not, far as I can tell, a member of Veruca Salt, made several important observations: Of Montreal was weird enough to warrant four e's; singer Kevin Barnes' ass was showing; Ms. Salt is terrified of stilts; and Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty was sitting to her left — "sitting"!

Okay, we get it: Of Montreal was crazy,/cool/weird, strange, costume-y, and nightmare-inducing. Barnes likes to wear skirts (the rest of the group, dressed all in white, looked like a parody of a wedding band). The band's four stage dancers had many shades of nylon bodysuits. Concertgoers were possibly on ecstasy, but definitely "high as shit" (or tweeting as though they were, anyway). What about the music? The Post's David Malitz said a lot of people were standing around, but I saw way more people freaking out than during Surfer Blood the night before; I guess opener Janelle Monae set the bar high. (Fact was, the floor was too packed to dance if you wanted to, so instead there was a lot of aggressive head-nodding.)

Of Montreal underwear is not hot. (Photo: Ryan Kearney)

There's no question, however, that some fans were disappointed. Maybe it got too weird. Maybe, as Spin claims, the set was "poorly paced" and "overly long." Two meatheads standing beside me spent an hour shouting back and forth about how the new album "sucks" and they wanted the band to "rock out" and that "no one's clapping" because "it's fucking awful." (Only "Suffer for Fashion" shut them up.) And then, despite @hmKuldell's protestations, the band closed with a Michael Jackson medley that included "Thriller" and "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'."

I got plenty of grotesque animal costumes, but I did not get my "The Past is a Grotesque Animal." At least I could bike home and didn't have to board "the hipster train."