Funkadelic glam-rock with hooks and fishnets

There's a severe shortage of dance music for the indie nation, so Avalon was packed on Sunday with an interesting cross section of alternative teens and seasoned hipsters shaking their booties -- OK, jumping in place -- to of Montreal's ridiculously catchy and challenging pop tunes. Ridiculous, literally: Darth Vader was first onstage, followed by band members in helmets, tutus, angel wings, and rain boots, and finally of Montreal mastermind (and zealous cross-dresser) Kevin Barnes, who was, shockingly, wearing pants and a T-shirt. Later, he changed into fishnet stockings, satin shorts, and a glimmering blouse, a far more suitable ensemble for a night of hook-filled, lo-fi, funkadelic glam-rock.

The Athens, Ga., group, spawned as part of the Elephant 6 collective a decade ago, has remained true to the founding ethos of experimentation and eclecticism, which means if you want to change from a brainy art-pop group to a costumed glam band you can. After stumbling onto synthesizers, drum machines, and a severe depression a couple of years ago, Barnes ran with all three on of Montreal's bitter and frantic new album, "Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?" It would have been impossible to re-create onstage the recording's dense, painstaking arrangements -- played mostly by Barnes -- but what the singer/guitarist and his four bandmates sacrificed in nuance they made up for with 90 nonstop minutes of tawdry majesty.

The show was a manic, messy, thoroughly euphoric mash of the Beatles, Prince, and Bowie -- with a show-closing cover of the Fiery Furnaces. It's hard to imagine anyone but Barnes getting away with a disco hissy fit like "She's a Rejecter," or making thumb-popping bass and cowbell sound au courant as he did on "Requiem for O.M.M.2." "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse," a cockeyed sugar rush about meds, balanced precariously (as did the rest of the material) between anarchy and melody -- which seemed like a fair approximation of the frontman's mindset as he yelped, "Come on mood shift/ shift back to good again/ come on be a friend, come on chemicals!"

Like of Montreal's albums, the production was a model of creativity on a shoestring. A three-headed monster and a faceless acrobat intermittently cavorted, two screens in sparkly homemade frames showed a surrealist loop of circa '70s photos and animation, and the ringleader kept changing into weirder outfits. If whimsy is a tonic, Barnes should soon be cured.

Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. For more on music visit boston.com/ae/music/blog.