As Kevin Barnes (the mastermind behind indie electro-pop purveyors of Montreal) croons on “St. Exquisite’s Confessions”: “The freaks want to take me home to see / If the rumors are true.”

And, after all the buzz that erupted following the Athens, GA-based band’s performance in New York City earlier this month, who could blame them?

As accounts of live horses and a raucous cover of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” rippled through the blogosphere, I awaited the chance to see in person whether the show was as extravagant as reported.

Finally, this opportunity arose when of Montreal brought its traveling spectacle to Chicago for a Monday night show at the Riviera Theatre.

Despite having a pretty concrete idea of what to expect during the concert, the sheer amount of visual imagery and schizophrenic musical outpouring made it impossible to become bored while watching and listening as the slightly less than two hour show unfolded.

From the moment Barnes and Co. took to the stage accompanied by a team of golden creatures dancing along to “Id Engager” (before transforming into ninjas by the song’s end), it was clear that of Montreal intended to gratify the eyes as much as the ears on this evening.

In testament to this objective, a miniature rotating stage flanked by a bi-fold screen was used to showcase several skits – including a Wild West saloon shootout, a nun supplicating at the feet of a religious figure and Barnes’s own (eerily realistic) hanging.

Giving the sense that Halloween had arrived five days early, a crew of actors frequently roamed the stage in animal masks, military fatigues and other various get-ups. Even drummer Ahmed Gallub joined the act, wearing a blonde wig, pink boa and oversized sunglasses as he pounded away behind his elevated drum kit.

However, despite all that was going on, the primary focal point of the show was always Barnes.

Whether he was slathered in shaving cream or painted red, strutting around with a mic or strumming a guitar, being hanged from a noose or shot in the mouth, Barnes was continually at the forefront of the action.

Donning several costumes throughout the night – including an oversized fanny pack and a horse’s latter half – the frontman eventually settled on a gold thong with a purple waistband as his main attire.

Yet, rather than being gratuitous or shocking, Barnes’s nearly naked appearance was merely apropos of the overtly sexual and (psychologically) revealing lyrics he sang in “Plastis Wafers” and “Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse,” respectively.

Serving to make the event even more of a personal affair for Barnes was the appearance of his brother David (who designed most of the sets), his wife Nina (the aforementioned nun) and daughter Alabee (who hopped around a small portion of the stage for much of the encore).

Although they needed little prompting, the crowd packed into the pit area took its cues from Barnes – dancing, jumping and clapping whenever he commanded (and often when he didn’t). From my vantage point up in the balcony, the crowd seemed to be perpetually pulsing to the same rhythm the band was pumping through the speakers.

The impassioned audience response was all the more impressive in light of the fact that a large portion of the set list was culled from the just released Skeletal Lamping, which hit stores a week ago Tuesday and was basically played in its entirety. But, even fans unfamiliar with this latest full-length had occasion to dance and sing along to older offerings from Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, The Sunlandic Twins and Satanic Panic in the Attic.

After exiting amidst a flurry of feathers shot into the audience, of Montreal returned to the stage a short while later to appease the screaming crowd with a short encore that concluded with the dynamic one-two punch of “Oslo In The Summertime” (featuring Barnes playing an extended drum intro) and “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

Even though it remains to be seen whether the show will enable Barnes to exorcize his inner demons, at least the rest of us got to experience a little Nirvana.

Set List (in no particular order and not guaranteed to be complete)

Id Engager
Nonpareil of Favor
Wicked Wisdom
For Our Elegant Caste
Touched Something’s Hollow
An Eluadarian Instance
Gallery Piece
Women’s Studies Victims
St. Exquisite’s Confessions
Triphallus, To Punctuate!
And I’ve Seen A Bloody Shadow
Plastis Wafers
Beware Our Nubile Miscreants
Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse
A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger
She’s A Rejecter
Wraith Pinned To The Mist And Other Games
So Begins Our Alabee
—
Disconnect The Dots
Oslo In The Summertime
Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana cover)

Because I arrived at Canopy ultra early, I headed over to the UGL to kill time before the show and did some Wikipedia-aided research on the night’s performers. This turned out to be a great decision because the entry on Tim Fite provided me with a startling (and awesome) fact: Fite was the first half of Little T and One Track Mike, the white rap duo behind the goofy 2001 MTV hit “Shaniqua.” (If you’re not familiar, check it out below.)

Although Fite was instantly recognizable to me from his one hit’s ubiquitous music video (even his haircut was identical – a crew cut with one long string of hair coming out of the front) his overall appearance has changed drastically. Wearing a cream-colored button-up shirt paired with suspenders, Fite seemed intent on channeling a fundamentalist minister who wouldn’t be out of place in O Brother, Where Art Thou?

This image matched well with the preachy content of his songs. It appears to be no coincidence that Fite has found a label home on ANTI-, as his lyrics railed against consumerism (the hip-hop rant “It’s All Right Here”) and “the Man” (folksy single “Away From The Snakes”).

While I wasn’t particularly impressed with the songs themselves (an exception being the plucky, acoustic strains of “Big Mistake”), there’s no denying the show was strangely entertaining. In lieu of using live instruments, a video screen showed weird footage of Fite sitting in a wheelchair playing a guitar and keyboard while other images of himself danced in the background. Between tunes, short animated cartoons (similar in style to the ones Demetri Martin uses in his stand-up) entertained the crowd and twice led them to act out “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.”

All of these slightly juvenile attempts at humor provided an unsettling juxtaposition with songwriting that was seriously aimed at exposing society’s faults and left the impression that the transformation from Little T to Tim Fite was not yet complete. In contrast to his own claim, perhaps it’s not quite true that Shaniqua don’t live here no more.

If Tim Fite had actually been the leader of a Southern Baptist church revival, than Man Man was exactly the sort of evil he would seek to exorcise – a gypsy camp after dark, reveling in sin and sound into the early morning hours.

Despite also being signed to ANTI-, about the only thing the Philadelphia-based quintet seemed dead set against was silence. Never once pausing to address the crowd, the band filled its time slot with the typical strumming of bass and guitar coupled with the banging of drums and piano keys – but also added to the mix metal pots, whistles, xylophones and whatever else could be used to produce noise. (At one point, lead singer Honus Honus even went up to the mic and jingled his keys, prompting many in the crowd to do the same and making the place sound like Memorial Stadium before a kickoff.)

Starting off with two consecutive tracks from the April 2008 release Rabbit Habits (”Doo Right” and “Easy Eats Or Dirty Doctor Galapagos”), Man Man maintained a fairly high level of energy via uptempo cuts including “Mister Jung Stuffed” and “Harpoon Fever.”

Although the action on stage wasn’t nearly as raucous as I had been expecting, the pit was even more so – as people in the crowd (some of whom sported fake moustaches, war paint and cloths tied around their heads in homage to the band) seized every opportunity to dance and jump around.

After playing roughly 15 songs, the band came out for two encores (and possibly a third, although I left during the second). Somewhat disappointingly, these returns to the stage established a much less lively tone than was featured in the original set. Leaving behind its signature groove-worthy tunes, Man Man offered up more subdued, expansive cuts such as “Skin Tension” and “Gold Teeth.”

While it was nice to see a different side of the band whose frenetic songs seemed to meld together when played one after the after, I would rather have seen more of an effort to mix up the tempo throughout the show than to end it on such a downbeat note.

But I guess even the most roaring of campfires dies out eventually.