Though they’re indie and quirky and I tend to like those qualities in a music band, I could also be really cynical about Of Montreal.

Of Montreal at the Norva Friday night.

In a way they feel a little like a really talented group of former theatre geeks. A grown-up glee club that somehow found a cult following. And psychedelic drugs.

Their show is padded with skits. And I’ll be honest, I don’t really have time for skits in my music. I’ve always hated them on hip hop records and I’m even less tolerant when I’m at a rock show and I can’t hit next.

But their popularity is a testament to a phenomenon in indie music culture that I’ve been writing about since it’s become apparent to me: the instinctive migration of fans away from irony and cynicism, and towards sincerity and abandon. These fans are the very same that have upheld Flaming Lips for decades and made rock stars out of Explosions in the Sky and Architecture in Helsinki. They want their music to have an “I don’t give a fuck what you think of this, Ima do me” kind of attitude.

Which is why I am specifically not cynical about Of Montreal. They are a band of nerdy, happy, hippie, indie pirates, and they don’t give a fuck. They do what they do, whether we’re watching or not. And I respect that.

Of Montreal fans Byron Sweet, Sarah Slade, Jamie Skinner and Travis Henderson.

I noticed right away upon entering the Norva that the crowd reflected that, too. These weren’t the same arrogant hipsters that normally populate indie shows, swigging PBRs and judging everyone. The Of Montreal crowd is more like a motley gang of sweet, smart ragamuffin children. Among them I noticed a guy dressed as a marching band member, his face painted, and surrounded by friends who were themselves dressed as a cowgirl, a Carnivale masquerader, and Steve Zissou.

“Of Montreal has quite a theatrical show, and I’ve seen people dressed up at them,” said the one in the band uniform, Byron Sweet, 29. He and his crew drove up an hour from Elizabeth City, North Carolina. “My feelings are, ‘The more, the better’. It looks like they’re having fun, so why shouldn’t I?”

For Sweet, traveling a considerable distance to hit an Of Montreal Show is “well worth it”; he once drove four hours to see them play at Chapel Hill. Why? “They’re music is really honest and danceable. Not at all pretentious. Just fun.”

Upstairs we ran into AltDaily contributor Richard Perkins, who every day wears a black suit, a hat with pink flowers, and bad-ass boots. (He looks more like a Bob Dylan-esque artist than a crazy person, I assure you.) We also met an AltDaily reader who recognized us and chatted about the website for a bit. The two conversations made me feel even more like, ‘This Of Montreal crowd is kind of our people.’ We were introduced then to Jenny Glass who her friends described as the true Of Montreal fan among them.

Frontman Kevin Barnes takes the mic from a tiger-masked performer.

“I like their dance-y beats,” said Glass, 20, from Norfolk. “I don’t like that they did an Outback commercial.”

But before you think that she’s a little cynical about Of Montreal, she admits, “[Their music] brings out the indie pop pleasure in me. They’re my guilty pleasure.”

By the time we came down for the show, a sizeable audience had accumulated, despite the blustery weather of the night.

The show opened with performers in tiger, pig and bear masks taking the stage. Kind of disturbing when you’re expecting happy pop. But Kevin Barnes–Of Montreal’s amazing, super-gay (yet actually straight) and fabulous frontman–and the rest of the band came on and delivered the dance-y pop songs that fans came out for. I could’ve lived without the guys in bodysuits and glittering masks with their stage props of a smoke-spewing hose and strobe lights. At one point Jesse said to me, “You do realize that onstage right now are two men in flesh-toned leotards and pig masks wrestling each other, right?”

A performer in a bodysuit and projected light.

But just when I felt that cycnicism in me creep up, just when you might think that this show is all too nonsensical and twee, the actors performed a dramatic and intense scene in which a priest rapes a little boy, who then, with Barnes, overtakes the priest and beats the shit out of him–all while illustrations of nightmarish, psychedelic wolves played on the screen behind them. It was hardcore.

“Kevin Barnes is a unique and captivating frontman; he brings an exciting and very strange vibe to the stage,” said Rachelle Owen, 24, of Norfolk.

Indeed. Besides the bizarre theatrics, Barnes gives a weird sexual performance that is a little Bowie, a little Warhol and a little Captain Jack Sparrow. And I simply cannot hate on that.