HOME

REVIEWS

SoundsXP Presents

Friday 6th April 2012
All Day BBQ Festival

Sparrow and the Workshop
6 Day Riot
The Nuns
Singing Adams
Y Niwl
Colours
Dignan Porch
+more tbc

The Windmill
Brixton
Price tbc

On Our iPod

Golden Grrrls - New Pop 7”

Chris Devotion & The Expectations - Amalgamation & Capital (album)

Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester (album)

Throwing Up - Mother Knows Best 7”

Howling Wolf - Complete Chess Masters 1951-60

The Ketamines - A Rotten Bond/1 Yr (from Oddbox Singles Club Pt 2)

Cardinal - Hymns (album)

Proper Ornaments - Taking the Gamble Out of Buying 12”

Darren Hayman - January Songs (album)

Various: Marshall Teller EP 12”

Latest Forum Posts

Album Review

Of Montreal
Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? Polyvinyl Recording Co

Article written by Ged M - Feb 21, 2007

Musically, this continues where The Sunlandic Twins left off; electro(ish) pop greedily feeding on about 4 decades and several continents of musical inspiration (the Beach Pet Shop Boys, if you like). Lyrically, it's a ghost train ride into a person's crumbling psyche. Any writer is told to write what they know but Kevin Barnes goes the full personal hog in songs reflecting geographical dislocation (part-Athens, GA, part-Norway) and marital disharmony. It's about bad brain chemistry and self-loathing ("c'mon moodshift, shift back to good again" from 'Heimalsgate Like A Promethean Curse'), which mutates into active dislike by the second half of the album. That peaks with 'She's A Rejecter' whose spritely electro-pop trembles with a transgressive bravado but is fairly unpleasant when you listen closely: 'there's the girl who made me bitter/ want to pay some other girl to just walk up to her and hit her/ but I can't'. The wall between artist and audience is completely demolished; everything seems so autobiographical, it's difficult not to react personally, which creates a bipolar schism between the manic lows conveyed by the words and the pop highs of the music.

If that's challenging, the music is Kevin's trump card. Despite the odd false note (the shrill, multitracked Prince-isms of 'Labyrinthian Pomp' that sounds like a bad Scissors Sisters), there are some great Of Montreal tracks: from the hyperventilating disco-pop of 'Suffer For Fashion' to 'Funny Ain't No Kind Of Rider' (hateful lyrics at times but melody piled on melody). Best of all is the album's centrepiece 'The Past is a Grotesque Animal', 11 minutes of furious Krautrock rhythms that grow in intensity and oppressive beauty the longer it goes on. Kevin's lyrics get more idiosyncratic while the synths whirl and fizz: "I fell in love with the first cute girl that I met who could appreciate Georges Bataille/ standing at a Swedish festival discussing 'Story of the Eye'". Borderline pretentious and slightly mad but if you know his idiosyncratic literary tastes it works. If you want more of the confessional, the double vinyl version has four extra tracks (also available on a tour CD) that mix melody and apology.

For all the great pop moments you're left wishing for more self-editing or someone to moderate the manic intensity (the album is written, produced and played by Kevin, which isn't always positive). Imagine Brian Wilson self-diagnosing his anguish through the songs on 'Pet Sounds' to spot the line between creative mental tension and indulgent self-regard. The music ultimately saves it but it's a close run thing.

Links:
http://www.ofmontreal.net