Far be it from me to speculate on Kevin Barnes’ emotional state, but after listening to the latest Of Montreal release, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, I’d have to say he got burned, badly. Barnes, the main creative force behind Of Montreal, recently split from his wife, and the experience seems to have left him with no desire for the loopy, obscure narratives of previous releases.
Sure, the crazy song titles are still there – “Faberge Falls for Shuggie,” “A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger,”– but the lyrics are surprisingly heartfelt and straightforward. Lines like “There’s the girl that left me bitter/Want to pay some other girl to just walk up to her and hit her” from the gloomy “She’s A Rejecter” wouldn’t sound out of place on a Simple Plan album.
Musically, Of Montreal is as eccentric as ever. Within songs, mode and technique vary wildly. “Labyrinthian Pomp” goes from dark dub to Prince-esque vocals to space-age guitar noodling, all in the space of a minute or two. But that doesn’t mean that the songs are inaccessible. The hooks are still there, and the layered harmonies make the strangest transitions pretty and easy.
The heavily processed musical stylings sometimes combine with the intensely personal and emotional lyrics. But Barnes knows what he’s doing; the juttering chords of “Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse” echo the song’s chorus: “Come on mood, shift, shift back to good again.” On the 12-minute odyssey, “The Past is a Grotesque Animal,” ominous bubbling bass combines with jittery strings to underscore biting lyrics about being alone and being wrong. It’s a vicious, cleansing work, and despite all the strange references and noises, when Kevin Barnes sings “no matter where we are/we’re always touching by underground wires,” you understand. Of Montreal has accomplished the remarkable feat of making a deeply weird record that you can relate to.
