Spazzy french-canadian art-punks Les Georges Leningrad last night at the Open End Gallery was out of control. First of all, I felt like I'd stepped into a David Lynch music video. The venue is basically an upscale basement show, a large art space converted into a venue by putting a (too low) stage in the middle and a "bar" in the corner consisting of a cooler of PBR and two boxes of wine. A huge parachute is hung over the ceiling covering the stage and most of the room, probably in an attempt to contain the sound, which isn't especially good unfortunately. Other than that there were red spotlights on the stage giving it an extremely eerie glow, especially under the parachute. The band came out in costumes, with singer/keyboardist "Poney P" in a polka-dotted dress and a black wig that fell lower and lower on her face throughout the show, covering the cat whiskers she'd painted on herself; drummer "Bobo Boutin" dressed as some sort of superhero called "La Creature," with LEOPARD HOTPANTS (I saw quite a bit of skinny, skinny ass throughout the show), a cape, a zorro mask, and drawings of weird birds on his chest; and finally guitarist/electronic noise guru "Mingo L'Indien" in this orange and yellow spandex number that covered his entire body (head included, with a felt mustache attached) and just said "superhero" on the front in felt letters. I should add that all these costumes were clearly homemade, and hilarious. You can only imagine what kind of craziness ensued for the next hour. They tried to talk occasionally in between songs, but the mixture of the bad sound and their french accents made it difficult to really understand what they were saying, but it was funny anyway. I'll have a full review up here and on tinymixtapes sometime soon.

I should also add that the outfits in the audience were no less ridiculous than those up on stage. I so wish I'd had a camera. I guess I hadn't been to a real hipster-y show lately, but this was too much. These weren't just hipsters, they were a bunch of kids (all ages show, snap) trying to outdo each other by making the biggest "statement," like the star trek-meets cher boy who was wearing, in order from the bottom up, black velcro shoes (not ironic, just awkward), black tapered jeans, a sequined tunic, large thick glasses with tape on the side, and had a rattail. There was also the boy wearing a polo dress, polka-dotted tights, and some sort of bird mask on his head.

Anyhoo, if LGL are coming to your town soon, it's a must see.