of Montreal at the Showbox SoDo last night. Slideshow [flickr].

The main mistake of Montreal made was kickng off their Skeletal Lamping tour with a setpiece featuring Kevin Barnes trotting onto the stage astride a LIVE HORSE. Because, as far as expectations games go, that’s a tough one to beat even when you know that no band, no matter their level of sanity, is going to take a horse with them on the road. Still, every show after that will be measured by an equine yardstick and no matter how much spectacle there is (and there will be a whole lot of it), a certain segment of the audience will await the moment of the horse’s arrival.

As far as I could tell, though, the show had everything but that stallion. Pigs and ninjas. So many sexy ninjas. Death and rebirth. Guitar playing tigers and crowd-warming cowboys. The air filled with pig-launched flying feathers. Covers of “Take Me Out” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as encore. The song about Antarctica left unblemished by crass commercialism. Too many costume changes to track, and bizarre scenes of buddhas, the old west, blasphemous nuns, and animal tableaus. Silver-faced John McCains staging a hanging. Body paint, centauric transformation, and a resurrection in shaving cream. This two-plus hour dance party left the expansive room hungry for more, jittery from too many energy drinks, and coughing up feathers and glitter in awe when it was all over.