Of Montreal – Webster Hall – June 23, 2026

Most bands come through town and play a show, but it’s a much smaller number that actually put on a show, and it’s aprecious few that put on a show quite like Of Montreal. Kevin Barnes brough the latest incarnation of his long-running psych-pop outfit to Webster Hall on Tuesday night, putting on a hypersexual gender-fluid orgy of sight and sound as only he can. Opening with “Id Engager,” off their 2008 album, Skeletal Lamping, they almost instantly went full chaotic, with kaleidoscopic digital weirdness projected on the screen behind the stage, three figures in bodysuits engaging in quasi-choreographed movements, and the band igniting the crowd with a pulsing rhythm.

Somehow, the night only went up from there, Barnes mixing in new songs and old songs and bouncing around the stage with the same energy he’s been bringing to his live performances for decades. “Bassem Sabry” delivered a dose of disco clavinet while “Blab Sabbath Lathe of Maiden” laid down a hammer of dark bass and synth, Barnes hitting the high notes in counterpoint, the coda going full fuzz and distortion. Throughout the set, the troupe returned to the stage, each time festooned in psychedelic costumes impossible to describe in words. For all the spectacle, it was the music that had the audience moving: 

“20th Century Schizofriendic Revengeoid Man” was a heavy rock and roll, the crowd growing increasingly manic while some sort of Middle Earth creatures crisscrossed the stage and a screensaver from hell cast down on the stage, Barnes singing, “Why does everything seem fake? / Why does it all seem so unreal?” to punch home the point. 

Of Montreal dropped the fan-favorite “Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider” midway through, everyone in the room dancing and singing along in a frenzy. If you were going to guess a cover for them to play, I’m not sure the country standard “Tennessee Waltz” would have been the top guess, but when Barnes started waltzing with his dancers, dressed in some sort of otherworldly Day of the Dead masks and dresses, it kind of made sense. The encore drew exclusively from the seminal album Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer?, now almost 20 years old, the band building to an extended swell of noise that seemed to consume the entire room in its guitar-bass-keys-drums reverberations, Barnes and Of Montreal proving that they don’t just know how to put on a show, but they know how to end one too. —A. Stein | @Neddyo

(Of Montreal play The Sinclair in Cambridge, Mass., tonight.)

Photos courtesy of Silvia Saponaro | @silvia_saponaro

@silvialovesmusic

Thievery Corporation – Terminal 5 – February 28, 2025

Imagine if there was a band that morphed into a completely different one every time the lights changed color, a sort of sonic chameleon adjusting to its surroundings. That’s sort of what it felt like watching Thievery Corporation play to a packed house at Terminal 5 Friday night. I’m not positive it was the lights that were causing it, but the collective shape-shifted and changed its size, consistency and style from song to song and even within songs.

Band members came and went — including four different vocalists — switched instruments and more as they collectively mutated from space-funk to neo-soul to reggae to hip-hop to Indian psychedelic to dream-pop to a dizzying array of combinations and permutations thereof, with seamless transitions and boundless energy. 

 The set started with the stage drenched in red, vocalist Laura Vall leading a downtempo groove centered on the steady tambourine beat from percussionist Frank Orrall but before long the lighting changed and with it the band. “Radio Retaliation” was a mix of yellow and green for the reggae dancer led by Puma and then “Culture of Fear” flipped to hip-hop with rapper Mr. Lif igniting the crowd — and on it went. 

Rob Myers went back-and-forth between electric guitar and sitar, giving a completely different flavor, a two-person horn section apparated onstage to season the funk only to disappear again, and at no point did the world-party atmosphere dissipate. 

“All That We Perceive” was a futuristic soul with a deep hypnotic groove blanketing horns and sitar; “Shadows of Ourselves,” a downbeat psychedelic dappled in pink and blue; while “The Heart’s a Lonely Hunter” wobbled on a thunderous drumbeat with nifty overlapping melodies of keys and guitar, Orrall repeating the lyric “Welcome to my spaceship” accompanied by appropriate outer-space zaps of synthesizer.

Midway through chairs were brought out and the instrumentation went acoustic for a change of pace with the reggae “Amerimacka” and the indie-rock-ish “Sweet Tides.” The set built and tore down and reconstructed over again, finally ending in triumphant fashion with “Warning Shots,” all three vocalists onstage, bass and drums and guitar going big and loud, genres and styles changing at breakneck speed, and the audience dancing and singing along to the very end.  —A. Stein | @Neddyo

Ty Segall – Webster Hall – April 29, 2024

The rock and roll polymath Ty Segall and his scintillating band came to Webster Hall Monday night and ran the crowd ragged with a 90-plus-minute workout. They opened with the pairing of “The Bell” and “Void,” just as his latest release, Three Bells, does, nearly 15 minutes of nonstop churning of guitars, organ, bass and drums, Segall singing, “To realize, to be alive” as red lights bathed the stage. That first stretch found them evoking at times Pearl Jam, Metallica, Pink Floyd and Yes, featuring everyone in the band and creating a singular amalgam of rock for the giddy crowd.

The new record would be featured prominently all night, heavy and heavier, boot-stomp rhythms, but also music to dance to. “I Hear” was drenched in squealer guitar with an extended two-guitar outro. “Hi Dee Dee” was both clean and dirty, serrated-edge melody with Segall’s voice turning almost sweet. And later in the set, “My Best Friend,” with a contrasting sweetness, nearly funky with bubbles of bass floating up into the crowd. 

Older Segall favorites found their place, fitting right into the setlist. “Love Fuzz,” off 2012’s Twins, was a highlight, the band exploring the limits with an extended section of depths-of-hell guitar dueling. “Looking at You,” off the more recent Hello, Hi album, was Segall at his most noodling, the band stopping on a dime and then restarted, finding a chaotic near-jazz that segued into the set-closing “Denée.” One more banger off the new record, a little more dancing, a spare two-guitar crescendo for those who hadn’t gotten their fill, just another night for Ty Segall. —A. Stein | @Neddyo

(Ty Segall plays Royale in Boston tomorrow night.)

Hurray for the Riff Raff – Music Hall of Williamsburg – March 5, 2024

“It’s so good to be home.” That was Alynda Segarra beaming in front of a sold-out Music Hall of Williamsburg on Tuesday night, the Bronx native and band Hurray for the Riff Raff feeling right at home in Brooklyn wearing matching black vests and big smiles. With a brand-new album — The Past Is Still Alive — out for barely a week and already gaining critical acclaim, the set leaned heavily on the new material, opening, as the record does, with “Alibi,” Segarra with one foot in personal folk, the other planted in fuzzy rock — one in a sandal, one in a black boot. “Buffalo” showed off deft songwriting skills, the rhythmic singing and catchy chorus underpinned by the evocative, dreamlike lyrics.

The songs were beefed up by the backing band: slide guitar on that “Buffalo” adding atmospherics, a propulsive beat from drummer Yan Westerlund on “Hawkmoon” driving a straight rocker, and Nnamdï (who opened the show) coaxing a groove with his urgent bass playing on “Rhododendron,” off the 2022 LP Life on Earth. Segarra’s voice was the centerpiece, delivering one captivating lyric after another: lines like “I know that it’s dangerous, but I wanna see you undress / Wrap you up in the bomb shelter of my feather bed” in “Colossus of Roads.”

Saxophonist Lynn Ligammari joined the band midway through, turning “Snake Plant (The Past Is Still Alive)” Springsteen-esque as Segarra belted out the refrain, “Nothing will stop me now,” the crowd believing every word. Hurray for the Riff Raff also played selections from older releases, including the rawer bluesy energy of “Good Time Blues (An Outlaw’s Lament)” and Ligammari adding mournful soul to the weighty “The Body Electric,” which Segarra said “started it all” for the musician. The set ended with “Ogallala,” the band building to a triumphant swell, Segarra singing, “To watch the world burn / With a tear in my eye,” everyone in the room feeling right at home. —A. Stein | @Neddyo

(Hurray for the Riff Raff play The Sinclair in Cambridge, Mass., tonight.)

Jeff Rosenstock – Terminal 5 – September 7, 2023

It was Jeff Rosenstock’s birthday on Thursday and he celebrated with his band and thousands of raucous fans, playing the “biggest show we’ve ever played” at a packed Terminal 5. The mood was high-energy celebratory before they even took the stage, the crowd giddy with excitement, singing along with the preshow playlist to songs like “Life Is a Highway,” the band finally walking out (in birthday hats) to "Conga” by Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine, all but literally announcing, “Let’s get this party started.”

The ensuing 75 minutes was pure rock and roll party, beginning with “Will U Still U,” a mosh pit opening on the floor within seconds of Rosenstock singing, “Will you still love me after I fucked up?,” fully exploding in a frenetic drums and guitar breakdown mid-song. The night was also a celebration of Rosenstock’s just-released album, Hellmode, and the set leaned heavily on the new material with plenty of old favorites in the mix. The show was like the mosh pit itself, appearing aggressive from the outside, lots of love and heart and mutual respect on the inside. A flag behind the band mixed pride colors and weed-leaf icons with “666,” and that take-all-comers energy infused the music and the crowd’s jubilant enthusiasm. Lyrics like “They wouldn’t be your friend if you weren’t worth something,” in “Festival Song,” and “Don’t you pretend / The world is treating us all equal,” in “3 Summers,” gave the mind something to chew on while bodies slammed into one another.

Rosenstock slowed it down onetime mid-set for the almost-a-title-track “Healmode,” giving his songwriting a spotlight, the crowd noise falling to an impressive silence for a moment. But the rest of the night was an incendiary celebration, “Happy Birthday” being sung on more than one occasion and later teased in the intro to “You, in Weird Cities,” which built to a cathartic sing-along of “Whoa whoa whoa,” Rosenstock magically appearing upstairs at the back of the room on saxophone to coax the crowd along. The party went right up to curfew, as the best parties do, “We Begged 2 Explode” giving everyone one last chance to toast the birthday boy while he appropriately sang, “As we’re bouncing up and down trying to make the floor break / Stop sneering at our joy like it's a careless mistake.” —A. Stein | @Neddyo

(Jeff Rosentsock plays Roadrunner in Boston tonight.)

Lucius – Brooklyn Steel – February 3, 2024

Lucius, celebrating 10 years since the release of their breakthrough Wildewoman album, arrived at a sold-out Brooklyn Steel Saturday night and so did nearly a couple thousand fans, some of the packed crowd clad in sparkly attire, some just feeling sparkly on the inside, all ready to help celebrate the best they could. The band, fronted by dual lead vocalists Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig, was based in Brooklyn when the long-player was released, making the show a trip down memory lane in more ways than one. The album was more or less played straight through, opening with the title track, featuring clip-clop percussion, four-part harmonies, thumping bass and plenty of jubilant heys to get the audience stirring.

The first couple of songs featured red-and-blue-make-purple lighting and it seemed that the mixing of two primary colors to make a new palette of hues was a visual theme for the night, complementing the mixing of Wolfe and Laessig’s two voices to create a wealth of sonic hues. “Go Home” and “Until We Get There” were of the yellow + blue = organic green variety, both featuring slide guitar and slow-grow harmonies that drew in additional singing from across the room. Later in the set, “Dusty Trails,” featuring guest vocals from friend-of-the-band Louis Cato, found the stage bathed in a heartwarming orange. Ten years out, Lucius are experts at blending the folky elements and soulful elements, easily switching between the purple tambourine bounce of “Tempest” and the emerald single-microphone harmonies of “Housewarming,” a song that didn't make the final cut of the album but sounded right at home right in the middle of this live version. 

There wasn’t a ton of banter over the course of the night, but they made up for it by reading aloud letters that were left in a mailbox that had been stationed at the merch table for this tour. The notes were incredibly personal and touching and speak to the connection Lucius and Wildewoman have made with their fans over the past decade. Following this with a gorgeous rendition of My Morning Jacket’s “Wonderful” drove the emotional punch even deeper. The set closed with “Genevieve,” the lights a pure fiery red, the full band a singular force of dance-now rhythm. The show ended with an encore that found Lucius in the middle of the audience, the lights a joyous all-encompassing white, the band and their spectrum of fans indistinguishable, together singing, “So turn off the lights when you leave / ’Cause we’ve got everything we’re gonna need.” —A. Stein | @Neddyo

Swans – Music Hall – October 1, 2023

The walls of Music Hall of Williamsburg were shaking on Sunday night. As was the floor and the ceiling and the body parts of everyone at the band’s third straight sold-out show at the venue. An opening set from guitarist Norman Westberg established the evening’s energy, solo guitar and effects that seemed to buzz and resonate into every nook of the club’s foundation, eventually finding sweet melodies and enchanting echoes.

A little after 9 p.m., Swans took the stage for their third of three packed shows. Crowded on a stage bathed in a deep red for the night, Michael Gira led the ensemble with the strums of an acoustic guitar. The simplicity of the opening chords soon yielded to complex layering, first Gira’s chanting lyrics, then a shower of cymbal rattling, shrieks of electric guitars, lap steel moans, and hair-raising bass and drum drones. It was a growing intensity that was mirrored by an almost pronounced gentleness running counter in the empty spaces left by the growing wall of sound, the drums reaching a tribal pitch as the whole room trembled in response, rattling parts of my body I’m not sure are supposed to be rattled. This was “The Beggar,” the title track of the newest release from the veteran noise-rockers, a thick sauna of sound, nearly unbearable and yet cleansing.

When I looked at the time again, it was 10 p.m. and I’m not sure how many songs had been played or if I had passed out from the intensity of the noise, but it did feel good. The rest of the night was a taffy-pull of seven or eight more songs, many, like “The Memorious” and “Ebbing,” were off the new record, dark poetry and wild-eyed, room-shaking music. The latter was a personal highlight, a spellbinding intro, Gira’s chanting feeling like a summoning of spirit as he sang, “Gestating — just dreaming / Not breathing” making way to lovely melodic bits even as the chaotic energy grew. In the end, the show was a two-hour-plus endurance test, similar peaks and troughs of dark and light, a massive sound that, despite all the vibration, had no cracks in its foundation. —A. Stein | @Neddyo