Painted PalmsOf Montreal plays the Showbox at the Market tonight, and I mention what the band’s been getting up to lately in this week’s Short List:Of Montreal’s latest EP, the controllersphere, begins with what might be one of the strangest, most unexpected songs in the band’s long, storied career of unpredictable weirdness. “Black Lion Massacre” is a dark electronic dirge that slowly swells into a heaving mess of drums and feedback noise, while bandleader Kevin Barnes delivers sedate spoken word about the usual psychedelic sexual nightmares . . . Read the rest here. But what of tonight’s two opening acts, Louisiana/Bay Area collaboration Painted Palms (pictured) and local duo Beat Connection? Well, they both basically do dreamy pop songs swathed in downy synths and gently propelled by electronic beats–i.e., “chillwave.” It’s maybe a little weird that two such acts would be opening tonight’s show. While of Montreal have long incorporated synthesizers and electronic elements, their particular brand of pop fantasia has never really been about getting dreamy or mellow so much as getting manically lysergic one minute and then depressively psyhced-out the next. Of Montreal predate the ol’ glo-fi by a mile, and in all their genre play and shape-shifting, it’s never really been a style they’ve come close to. But I guess “weird” is incredibly relative in of Montrea’s world, and anyway, you could do a lot worse than these two acts . . .Last I saw Beat Connection, they were starting a dance party at the local laserdome, proving that their blippy electropop songs could take on surprisingly house-y aspects. They’re a local band well worth watching in the coming year(s). Check out their Surf Noir EP to see where they’re coming from.Painted Palms I only became acquainted with this morning, but a quick spin through the Canopy EP on their bandcamp page suggests that they’ll be equally pleasant openers:Canopy EP by Painted PalmsFollow us on Facebook and Twitter.