Showing posts with label 2009. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2009. Show all posts
Saturday, September 19, 2009
2009-07-28 - Supersweet
"I felt like I had been in a sexually hibernated state of mind all through my twenties. In my early thirties, I started waking up to sexuality and exploring it, thinking about it a bit more."
Trying to pin down psychedelic pop act of Montreal in their brief British summer tour has been as tricky as a slippery eel, yet we wrestled like a bitch on heat and finally spoke to them on their US turf. Their evasion hasn’t been without precedent, with touring injuries, back to back shows and broken down vehicles but still the band still are fighting fit. Even twelve years later, face painted enthusiast and front man Kevin Barnes is wonderfully meticulous about sloppy spelling, reminding SUPERSWEET “of Montreal, is with lowercase “o””, just in case we get it wrong (as if we would...)
It’s tempting to imagine that Barnes is completely eccentric in his personal life in reflection of the obscure directions fulfilled within his music. Blissfully as normal as the rest of us, he tones down off-beat motivations to watch Sports Center, host cocktail parties, play volleyball and take part in "pretty conventional stuff". Admitting that people usually are surprised by his homely activities, simply reveals how much a distinct mark of Montreal’s illustrious affair with music has left over the past twelve years.
Long before he established himself as the genius behind the ecstatic pop experiments in Georgian sensation of Montreal, Barnes spent every day working on music. "All I really did when I was in high school was go home, hide in my bedroom and just make four-track recordings all day," he says. The intimate bedroom demos eventually saw the light of day on the 2001 compilation The Early Four-Track Recordings. Every song is named after the actor Dustin Hoffman from hilarious track ‘Dustin Hoffman Does Not Resist Temptation to Eat the Bathtub’ to the incontinence song ‘Dustin Hoffman Becomes Indignant and Wets Himself'.
Revealing the reason for homage to the Marathon Man, Barnes concedes that "It was a funny, kooky idea to pretend like it was a concept album, even though the songs had nothing to do with the titles, and nothing to do with Dustin Hoffman. It was just a spontaneous thing the band created over lunch one day." Placing jovial stints aside, Barnes has progressed a long way since high school recordings, releasing eight studio albums of diverse pop music, all leading up to the climax of 2008's Skeletal Lamping.
Skeletal Lamping is of Montreal's most overtly sexual record, both musically and lyrically. Each track is a none-too-subtle exploration of lust which just as much about getting you off, as making you ferociously dance. Lyrical vivid, of Montreal explicitly boast with words "I want to make you come / 200 times a day" and "I took her in the kitchen / ass against the sink" making the band's previous work look downright innocent by comparison. In fact, it was Barnes's shifting attitude towards sex that inspired him to take the record to a more provocative place: "I think I was just going through a sexual awakening," he says, "I felt like I had been in a sexually hibernated state of mind all through my twenties. In my early thirties, I started waking up to sexuality and exploring it, thinking about it a bit more. It was kind of natural that it also came through in my art."
Although Skeletal Lamping differs from of Montreal's previous records in numerous ways, it maintains the sense of humor that runs through their songwriting and notoriously decadent stage performance. While Barnes performed an actual a comedy tour in 2005, called ‘A Pollinaire Rave’, the front man confirms that he now expresses his comedic impulses through of Montreal. Telling SUPERSWEET that "there's always a sense of humor involved in the theatrics” Barnes answers “I think it's just incorporating that into what of Montreal is now, whereas before, ‘A Pollinaire Rave’ was sort of a separate thing. Now it's all together as one."
Always challenging dance-pop conventions, Barnes comments on the problems of adhering to such structures today: "Sometimes I think that people follow the pop template too much.”. Barnes observes how “There's a pressure that if you want to have a commercially successful song, it has to fit into these parameters, and I think that's definitely unhealthy for the art of music". To combat this anxiety, the singer welcomes song structures as a challenge and a creative liability all because "It's kind of fun to fit as many ideas as you can into three and a half minutes!"
Ready for the artistic exertion, work on of Montreal's anticipated next album False Priest is already in motion, with approximately six songs completed, yet Barnes is still writing and experimenting before deciding what will be on the new record. The creative kook describes the new album as “very funky dance music” complimented with "a lot of strange lyrical imagery”, sneakily hinting that the record will feature some longer songs than we're used to hearing from him.
Continuing the of Montreal legacy, Barnes adds False Priest to their self-produced selection of albums, yet the singer is always open to working with other producers under the right circumstances: "It all depends on what sort of chemistry there is between me and the other producer, and I don't know if I could get to that place," Evidently, producer Jon Brion recently released an EP of remixes from Skeletal Lamping, swaying Barnes’s ideas of collaborative production. With little opposition to possible Brion-produced of Montreal record, the singer ponders the idea, thinking it "could definitely be good. It could definitely be interesting."
After the exciting change of direction that was Skeletal Lamping, it will be fascinating to follow of Montreal in their rapid ascent to giddy new heights of dance-pop.
Monday, July 6, 2009
2009-07-06 - The Skinny
of Montreal: Wild Mood Swings
Posted by Jason Morton, Mon 06 Jul 2009
(be sure to check the original article for the splendid pictures)
(be sure to check the original article for the splendid pictures)
After several universally lauded LPs, psych-pop outfit of Montreal unleashed the divisive Skeletal Lamping on the public late last year. Jason Morton steps into the expressive world of Kevin Barnes.
Soundcheck isn’t going well for psychedelic popsters-cum-performance artists of Montreal. Kevin Barnes, mastermind of the oft-brilliant group, calls off the testing of the waters with An Eluardian Instance – a new single from 2008’s Skeletal Lamping, which, with its emphatic, brassy sound, would take pains to not sound enthused. But the rapture ends prematurely and the warm-up session at Òran Mór grinds to a halt as the tour manager leaves to scout the West End’s music shops for a proper adapter to cater for one of the group’s myriad musical implements.
When he returns empty-handed, it’s up to Barnes to rework the section of the song for which the equipment is necessary, eating away time for rehearsal, relaxation, make-up and, well… eating. Giving testament to the band’s prolific nature (they’ve released a seven-inch/DVD combo and a remix EP since November’s Lamping), he wraps it up quickly, ready to talk about one of last year’s most divisive records, the follow-up to the acclaimed Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
“I think it’s kind of funny when someone says ‘Oh, it’s too schizophrenic, too fragmented…’” Barnes says. “But yeah, that was the point. It’s like collage music, genre-hopping – some stuff is pretty progressive and some is extremely derivative, but intentionally so.”
With wild mood swings taking the record from depressed acoustic introspection to the sexed-up electro-pop of closer Id Engager - whether bad or good, the LP certainly keeps a listener on their toes.
“It can be rewarding to listen to something unpredictable: That was the goal, for better or worse. Obviously it’s not the best record ever, but it’s an interesting record.” Barnes sounds like neither plaintiff nor defendant when talking shop; rather than an apologist, he comes off more like a true believer: “It’s sort of indicative of the time we’re in right now, where people are looking for more creative music and artists are taking more chances.”
According to Barnes, sessions for the record started off in practical mode, applying a verse-chorus-verse theory, but this soon collapsed. “I abandoned that approach and just made one piece at a time. I was trying to make them, and it didn’t really flow - it sounded awkward. I felt like there’s no real reason. So many people are trying to do it the other way: write the perfect pop song. I would rather make awkward pop music than predictable pop music.”
The album's 'narrative' – a term used loosely here – could be described as equally erratic. While previous albums have woven stories or confessionals to the melodies, the emergence of his transgendered, middle-aged alter ego Georgie Fruit as a vocal character marks a step in a different direction for Barnes.
“I think the whole Georgie Fruit thing is sprung from my depression period," he says. "I didn’t really think about it at the time, but looking back on it, I think that maybe I just needed an escape from that: the darkness of the Kevin Barnes reality. When I balanced things out a little bit, this other character just rose to the surface.”
While this unleashing of an alter-ego has occurred throughout pop culture's androgynous past, perhaps most prominently with Ziggy Stardust, it’s not exactly common in the indie community. But this is something Barnes describes as getting out of his “comfort zone”, though he indicates that it was a natural process.
Their leader’s songwriting methodology seems to have paid off for the Athens, Georgia outfit, with increased sales and graduation to higher-profile venues, at least in their native US, coming with the new record. Barnes doesn’t dwell on this long, however, preferring instead to highlight the opportunities afforded to the band by the exposure: “This last tour that we did we actually played good-paying festival shows. We squirreled the money away, knowing we’d need a big budget if we put on this production.”
The ever-evolving of Montreal live show – which has recently included the singer being led to stage on a white horse or being hung from makeshift gallows – incorporates video and dramatic performance, at a level of production that has been building for years.
“At the very beginning, we were driven by the indie rock/punk rock mentality of ‘Don’t dress it up. Be as real as possible’." says Barnes "Ever since [2004’s] Satanic Panic in the Attic, we decided we were going to try something visually interesting, and it built up from there, tour by tour, adding new elements.”
With the time and thought put into each tour’s production – mostly by Kevin's brother David, who designs much of Montreal material (albums, posters, lamps) – the band thinks of it as “two separate productions that are lopped on top of each other. It’s not just throw a bunch of people on stage and goof off for three minutes; it’s definitely a planned skit.”
Barnes concedes that in the US, the larger crowds create an easier setting for stage play, but hopes the band creates a similar experience for UK audiences as well: “Over here, we’re still building something, so we still play smaller places and we’re bumping into each other. There are people falling off the stage, bumping over keyboards. But we want to do something visually cool, so even if there’s no room for it, we’ll do it anyway.”
And while for the band’s past four albums Barnes has been the principle songwriter, he maintains that in performance and many other aspects, it’s a cooperative approach with everyone pitching in: “Of Montreal has become like an art collective. Everyone’s invested, everyone wears a bunch of different hats. Everybody is involved. You’re not just going to do one thing.”
This is why, in Barnes’ world, you might be scouring music stores for equipment one minute – or investigating the phenomenon of Neeps & Tatties - only to be cavorting around stage in a pig mask or skin-tight red bodysuit the next. And when the dual performance finally comes, you can tell even though it may take a lot of work and coordination, the band’s getting as much out of it as the fans are.
Monday, June 29, 2009
2009-01-29 - Manchester Mouth
My oh my, these interviews get weirder by the minute... Apparently of Montreal now belongs to the category of bands people have come to expect witty answers from, no matter the questions thrown their way is...
So check out this video, and learn about
(a) the different types of tomato sauce,
(b) who, between a lion and a shark, would win if they ever got to fight on the moon (and why),
(c) Kevin's grandfather's hunting habits (and things you always wanted to know about the South but never dared to ask) and
(d) why squirrels are akin to fish.
Oh, and also, Kevin and Bryan are apparently very confused about the differences between being vegetarian, vegan or pescatarian, and Kevin can't pronounce "Yorkshire" right (which send that annoying Mancunian college girl turned interviewer into squeaking mode). Oh well. At least there's no question about the name of the band, and no sign of Georgie Fruit either.
So check out this video, and learn about
(a) the different types of tomato sauce,
(b) who, between a lion and a shark, would win if they ever got to fight on the moon (and why),
(c) Kevin's grandfather's hunting habits (and things you always wanted to know about the South but never dared to ask) and
(d) why squirrels are akin to fish.
Oh, and also, Kevin and Bryan are apparently very confused about the differences between being vegetarian, vegan or pescatarian, and Kevin can't pronounce "Yorkshire" right (which send that annoying Mancunian college girl turned interviewer into squeaking mode). Oh well. At least there's no question about the name of the band, and no sign of Georgie Fruit either.
Thanks to spirichwlpasta over at the Townhall for the link.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
2009-01-23 - Bang Bang on RTBF
Belgium's LGBT radio show Bang Bang interviewed Kevin some time before the Botanique show on January 22nd. The podcast (dubbed in French) is downloadable from their website but folks at the Townhall get antsy when the Booty Patrol speaks French, or champions French (or whatever), so I transcribed what I managed to hear in English.
Q : I don't know if you're aware of the fact that tonight in Brussels there is the gay & lesbian film festival... Is it a coincidence?
K : Well, maybe not... God works in mysterious ways...
Q: Are you often shocked by questions?
K : No, never. I've no idea what it would take to shock me... Something physical would have to happen.
Q: So I won't hurt you...
K : Unless you start to choke me, I think I'll be fine.
Q: I know it's a phony question, but do you feel like a gay icon?
K: That would be weird because I'm not gay. But I really champion the gay cause, because I feel like so many people are so uptight and feel like they have to identify with their gender. They think they have to have a fixed identity, it is so important to them. Being caught making out with a person of the same sex would be a nightmare for a lot of people, which is absurd. I think people should be free to explore and less uptight.
Q: Do you think that what we call in French “la fluidité des genres” is an important thing and do you think that there will be a time when people are more comfortable with gender fluidity?
K: It's hard to say. Humanity has always been like that. We carry this burden and we pass it on to our children, who will in turn pass it on to their children... It clearly doesn't seem to be getting any better. But maybe, eventually, yeah... maybe it'll be a whole new epoch and everyone will be free... I don't know... At the same time, as long as people are not violent and don't fight you for being who you are, and don't hinder your self expression, I don't care if someone's uptight. Really, they have their own reality and it's their thing... I have my own reality and it's my thing. I'd be as much of a fascist if I tried to turn them into someone like me and threaten them with punishment... Obviously the first step is for everyone to be cool and care about their own business. I wouldn't want everyone to be like me. I'll do my thing, you'll do your thing and as long as we can live together peacefully, that's fine to me.
Q: Do you hide behind a character or can someone listening to your songs guess who you truly are?
K: You can definitely get to know me personally. Nothing's ever purely fictional. Everything I sing about is something that occurred to me, that comes from my mind... I can't fake it. I couldn't write something that's completely alien to who I truly am, how I truly feel... At least on some level, there is honesty in everything I do.
Q: So who's Tim?
K: Tim was a very good friend of mine when I was growing up in a small town. There wasn't any cool people around, people like us... Tim is the only person I had – I wasn't sexually attracted to him, but to me, it would have been perfect if it had been the case. We had great moments together, and I was really fond of him... It's kind of a tragedy of sexual preference.
Q: Would it have been a problem for you to be sexually attracted to a man?
K: No, not at all. I look forward to it. I love it when something unexpected happens, something I'd never thought about, things I'd never thought I'd do. I try to stay open to new experiences, and not have any strict rules for myself : “this is who you are – this is how you should act.” I want my identity to be as fluid as possible, and I really like it when I find myself obsessed with something I never thought I'd even like. That's the exciting part of life. Something new comes up and it adds value to your life.
So if I ever feel some kind of chemistry with a guy, I wouldn't hesitate and I'd go for it. But that's still kind of tricky, because I'm married and I love my wife, so we'd have to have a threesome or something.
Q:?
K: When I was growing up, I was always making up stories and daydreaming and acting out scenarios. We did theatrical stuff with my brother and my cousins and we would put on shows at family gatherings. Then I really got into sports. I was very butch back then, and somehow as a teenager I grew more feminine again, because I realized that my sports friends were very uptight, not very open-minded, and you had to be very tough and very stiff all the time and I just wasn't like that.
But that's funny, because I still really like sports. I like the idea of being this kind of fruity guy who's still very athletic and good at sports, and maybe even better than the other straight guys...
Q: But with purple nail varnish...
K: Exactly, I'd do like a jumpshot with sparkly nails and freak their minds.
Q : I don't know if you're aware of the fact that tonight in Brussels there is the gay & lesbian film festival... Is it a coincidence?
K : Well, maybe not... God works in mysterious ways...
Q: Are you often shocked by questions?
K : No, never. I've no idea what it would take to shock me... Something physical would have to happen.
Q: So I won't hurt you...
K : Unless you start to choke me, I think I'll be fine.
Q: I know it's a phony question, but do you feel like a gay icon?
K: That would be weird because I'm not gay. But I really champion the gay cause, because I feel like so many people are so uptight and feel like they have to identify with their gender. They think they have to have a fixed identity, it is so important to them. Being caught making out with a person of the same sex would be a nightmare for a lot of people, which is absurd. I think people should be free to explore and less uptight.
Q: Do you think that what we call in French “la fluidité des genres” is an important thing and do you think that there will be a time when people are more comfortable with gender fluidity?
K: It's hard to say. Humanity has always been like that. We carry this burden and we pass it on to our children, who will in turn pass it on to their children... It clearly doesn't seem to be getting any better. But maybe, eventually, yeah... maybe it'll be a whole new epoch and everyone will be free... I don't know... At the same time, as long as people are not violent and don't fight you for being who you are, and don't hinder your self expression, I don't care if someone's uptight. Really, they have their own reality and it's their thing... I have my own reality and it's my thing. I'd be as much of a fascist if I tried to turn them into someone like me and threaten them with punishment... Obviously the first step is for everyone to be cool and care about their own business. I wouldn't want everyone to be like me. I'll do my thing, you'll do your thing and as long as we can live together peacefully, that's fine to me.
Q: Do you hide behind a character or can someone listening to your songs guess who you truly are?
K: You can definitely get to know me personally. Nothing's ever purely fictional. Everything I sing about is something that occurred to me, that comes from my mind... I can't fake it. I couldn't write something that's completely alien to who I truly am, how I truly feel... At least on some level, there is honesty in everything I do.
Q: So who's Tim?
K: Tim was a very good friend of mine when I was growing up in a small town. There wasn't any cool people around, people like us... Tim is the only person I had – I wasn't sexually attracted to him, but to me, it would have been perfect if it had been the case. We had great moments together, and I was really fond of him... It's kind of a tragedy of sexual preference.
Q: Would it have been a problem for you to be sexually attracted to a man?
K: No, not at all. I look forward to it. I love it when something unexpected happens, something I'd never thought about, things I'd never thought I'd do. I try to stay open to new experiences, and not have any strict rules for myself : “this is who you are – this is how you should act.” I want my identity to be as fluid as possible, and I really like it when I find myself obsessed with something I never thought I'd even like. That's the exciting part of life. Something new comes up and it adds value to your life.
So if I ever feel some kind of chemistry with a guy, I wouldn't hesitate and I'd go for it. But that's still kind of tricky, because I'm married and I love my wife, so we'd have to have a threesome or something.
Q:?
K: When I was growing up, I was always making up stories and daydreaming and acting out scenarios. We did theatrical stuff with my brother and my cousins and we would put on shows at family gatherings. Then I really got into sports. I was very butch back then, and somehow as a teenager I grew more feminine again, because I realized that my sports friends were very uptight, not very open-minded, and you had to be very tough and very stiff all the time and I just wasn't like that.
But that's funny, because I still really like sports. I like the idea of being this kind of fruity guy who's still very athletic and good at sports, and maybe even better than the other straight guys...
Q: But with purple nail varnish...
K: Exactly, I'd do like a jumpshot with sparkly nails and freak their minds.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
2008-12-12 - Rolling Stone
12/11/08, 3:51 pm EST
Photo: Jim Newberry
2009 is shaping up to be a busy year for Kevin Barnes and Of Montreal. Talking to Rock Daily from Athens, Georgia, during a lull in the band’s ongoing Skeletal Lamping tour, Barnes says he’s already begun working on the band’s next album. “I’m slowly putting together some new stuff for the next record, like whenever I have a free moment,” Barnes says. “I’m really excited, I’ve been working on a lot of ideas. I kind of want to go in a slightly different direction, experiment, try to look for a new spark, inspiration. What I want to do now is slightly noisier. It’s sort of abstract in my mind, but right now what I’ll create will be mesmeric and kind of physical music. Try to create music that you have a physical reaction to. Try to touch you on a level that’s not strictly intellectual but more physical, and that’s not to say you’ll dance to it.”
Barnes said this new direction was inspired during a recent cab ride in London. “The cab driver was listening to this music, it was really loud and it was the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. He didn’t speak English so I couldn’t talk to him about it, but the music made me feel queasy but in a totally different level,” Barnes remembers. “It just haunted me so now every time I’m thinking about making music, I want to make music like that, it just speaks to a different level of consciousness.”
Barnes also talked about a side project he’s excited about called Blikk Fang. “Me and Andrew Andrew VanWyngarden from MGMT have a project together I really want to get off the ground in 2009, I’ve been talking to Jon Brion about maybe collaborating as well,” Barnes said. “We’ve actually created about 20 minutes of music, but that was the early part of last year. We’ve both been traveling like crazy so it’s hard to get together. The stuff we’ve done so far is sort of a soulful prog. It’s probably gonna be a pretty schizophrenic, crazy album.”
As for finally documenting the band’s theatrical live shows, Barnes reports, “We’ve filmed two shows, a show from L.A. from last year’s Hissing Fauna tour and we filmed one a month ago in Atlanta, so we do have plans to release a pretty comprehensive DVD with all the videos and two full live performances and documentary material as well.”
Friday, June 26, 2009
2009-04-15 - New Haven Advocate
Promotional Photo
Of Montreal: Weird and accessible, all in one crazy package!
Of Montreal
With Janelle Monae. 8 p.m. April 17. Toad's Place, 300 York St., New Haven. $20. 203-624-TOAD, toadsplace.com.
A decade ago, it would have been nearly impossible to predict of Montreal would turn into anything lasting. The band emerged from Athens, Ga., as part of Elephant 6, the indie-famous musical coterie of psychedelic pop aficionados. Starting with Cherry Peel in 1997, of Montreal released a stream of albums full of sunny, quirky guitar-pop.
"We wanted to be the ultimate '60s psychedelic rock band," says guitarist Bryan Poole in a recent phone interview. The lyrics were smart, the music riotously catchy, but of Montreal was seen as something of a kid-sibling band next to earlier Elephant 6 powerhouses such as Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control.
The E6 affiliation granted of Montreal stature most young bands don't have. The band flowered and its audience grew when it moved beyond the E6 sound, starting with the electro-glam-rockisms of 2004's Satanic Panic in the Attic.
It came at a crucial time, lifestyle-wise, for the musicians. "At some point, for most people, the harsh reality of not being able to do it anymore becomes apparent," says Poole. "You get to near 30, and you think, 'How long can I keep living in a house with a bunch of dudes, delivering pizzas?' I mean, I still live in a house with a bunch of dudes, but I don't have to deliver pizzas." Poole is aware that a flourishing second act never happened for, as he says, "a lot of bands I've adored."
He figures the band's growing popularity is the result of songwriter Kevin Barnes' pushing the limits of pop. For example, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, Barnes' mesmerizing, ear-candy-rich but harrowing chronicle of a heavy depression appeared immediately to be a career-defining moment on its release in 2007.
Poole welcomed Barnes' gradual turn toward naked emotionality. "The early, early material struck me," he says. Barnes "told me about events in his life and how they'd resonated.
"When he started writing songs that were personal again, it was something people could relate to."
Last year's Skeletal Lamping delves into weirder, more challenging territory — though sung largely from the point of view of Georgie Fruit, a fictional middle-aged transgendered African-American funk musician with a criminal past, the album touches on a hypersexual part of the human psyche that few indie rock bands address. That gets left to artists like Prince.
As Poole says, "Georgie Fruit kind of invaded [Barnes'] body for a year and a half or two years and wrote all these songs, funky Prince stuff with Bowie backing vocals."
The tour for Skeletal Lamping was an extravaganza, with "extra performers and dancing Buddhas and hanging gallows," says Poole. "I definitely felt like a part of Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Luckily we didn't lose money."
Live, the band dresses as if they raided a weird vintage shop. Barnes, who often goes through a handful of costume changes during a show, has pulled stunts such as riding onto the stage on a white horse. Once in Las Vegas, he got naked. The showmanship would appear empty if the songs were weak, but they're a barrage of ebullient and wide-ranging pop from a long string of albums.
The current tour will be scaled down to suit smaller venues, says Poole, and be "hopefully crazy and wild, but not as stupendous." There may also be songs Barnes has written since the Skeletal Lamping's release.
"He's like a welder or a plumber — he's honed his craft," Poole says. "He's pushed himself to go places a lot of people don't." Good news: The pushing is, for many of us, why we keep listening.
2009-04-22 - City Beat
Collective Consciousness
Of Montreal finds itself a decade-long overnight sensation
Many bands exist for years before anyone deigns to care. It took Aimee Mann the better part of two decades she went from fronting ‘Til Tuesday in the ‘80s, known only for the sugar-sweet hit, “Voices Carry,” to getting nominated for an Oscar at the turn of the 20th century for her contributions to the Magnolia soundtrack.
Of Montreal, the non-Canadian, pro-vaudevillian, Ziggy Stardust-esque troupe from Athens, Ga., have a similar chronology. They seemed to have come out of nowhere, even though they released their first album, Cherry Peel, in 1997.
But it wasn’t until 2005, when the album Sunlandic Twins was released, that Of Montreal began to cause a stir. Previously, their vibrant, synth-driven, flamboyant energy was seemingly fed the glittery residue that was left in the industry by bands long since deemed irrelevant to average music consumers: Queen, David Bowie and Prince. Needless to say, they weren’t commercially viable before that time.
If you remember, 2005 wasn’t exactly a renaissance of sonic Monets from superb musicians — awful music was the zeitgeist. Either record producers were signing record contracts to mediocre artists that made brains bleed across the nation (read: Fall Out Boy, Ryan Cabrera) or well-established, formerly brilliant artists were releasing tripe (Tori Amos’ The Beekeeper and Garbage’s Bleed Like Me). Good bands went marginally unnoticed in a sea of (non-Shirley Manson oriented) garbage.
But then Of Montreal became viable … in a commercial.
Their song “Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games” from Sunlandic Twins was dismantled and re-dubbed — even using another singer that sounded similar to frontman Kevin Barnes — by Outback Steakhouse. Exchanging the lyrics “Let’s pretend we don’t exist/ Let’s pretend we’re in Antarctica,” to the widely hummed-around-the-office favorite, “Let’s go Outback tonight,” Of Montreal got the flame-grill-kissed taste of fame.
“That’s something (we) signed not knowing what was in the contract,” says guitarist Bryan Poole. “We didn’t know that they could do anything they wanted to with the song and butcher it to hell.”
Poole has been the constant guitarist in Of Montreal since their inception. Their last two albums, Hissing Fauna, You Are the Destroyer and Skeletal Lamping have been fan favorites. Their sound — gleeful, spastic and psychologically stunning — is as complex as anything Henrik Ibsen ever wrote, fraught with tension and relief, color and charm.
Their albums are the equivalent of watching the best Rock Opera ever and then dying immediately afterward.
However, even Poole’s role with the now-successful band isn’t enough to satiate his sonic palate. He also performs in the bands Dark Meat, Tiny Sticks and his solo work as The Late B.P. Helium.
“It’s really important to keep playing with different projects because it expands your vocabulary,” Poole says.
But being a member of various groups doesn’t strike Poole as odd or even difficult to manage. “They’re all projects,” he says. “They’re entities unto themselves. They’re just friends.”
Poole’s not overly choosy about who he collaborates with. His criteria of workability is quite straightforward. “I don’t be in a group with assholes or jerks who play over everything,” he says.
But when he chooses to work with a band, he wants to be able to a) have a good time and b) make some terrific music. When it comes to Of Montreal, the proof is in the pudding.
“Basically these are friends of mine, so I’m making music with my friends who also happen to be great musicians,” Poole says.
Another way Poole keeps it simple is playing with musicians who are within the same artistic collective. Of Montreal and one of Poole’s earlier start-ups, Elf Power, were both members of the notorious Elephant 6 collaborative, along with other notable bands like Neutral Milk Hotel and The Apples in Stereo.
Elephant 6 is unique because it’s a collective of musicians that continually produces well-known Indie bands that occasionally swap musicians. Kevin Barnes even briefly played in Elf Power before Of Montreal. For Poole, this is perfection.
“(Elephant 6) is like a group of friends,” Poole says.
Despite Of Montreal’s success, Poole is set on maintaining his multiple-band status and hopes it doesn’t affect any of his other projects. However, Of Montreal does seem to take precedence with him because of the sheer amount of time he commits to the band.
“There’s only so many days in the year,” Poole says. “If Of Montreal is touring for half of the year, than you can say it’s my main project. But it’s really not my main project.”
Nonetheless, Poole also makes sure that while he’s touring with Of Montreal that his other projects still get attention. “You try to space things out and coordinate things to get together with other people,” he says.
“When you get together with different people, you get different ideas,” he said. “I work well with people that will come up with an idea I don’t know about.”
2009-02-27 - The Age
Eclectic band to spread its wings
Kevin Barnes turns Of Montreal's shows into dance parties, writes Craig Mathieson.
BRYAN Poole is worried. "Have you got my wings?" the guitarist for Of Montreal calls out to a crew member loading up with gear for the eclectic American six-piece's New York City show. He gets an affirmative response and sighs with relief.
"I had a set of wings made for me by a very nice girl who is a fan, bless her heart," explains the genial Poole. "They're tremendous — they fold up and then you can open them up on stage. I had a Brian Eno-like cape thing happening on the Hissing Fauna tour in 2007, so this is definitely the next step."
Wings barely qualify as being outside the norm when it comes to Of Montreal. The band's frontman and songwriter, Kevin Barnes, is a cross-dressing sylph with a taste for extravagant eyeliner and fishnets. Setting the tone for his musicians, he has created a visual element for the band that has turned their live shows into excitable dance parties.
But the band's frenetic live indie-disco is just one part of their make-up. The group boasts a rich back catalogue of nine studio albums, which with 2007's Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? and now Skeletal Lamping have grown increasingly diverse, flitting between styles within songs to reveal a songwriter equally fascinated by experimental literature, electro beats and gender politics.
"We're fortunate that Kevin has never had writer's block. He's always on and he's a workaholic," Poole says.
"The day we get home from tour he's into his attic recording. Making music is part of his DNA and it shows — he gets better and better at it. There's always another record in his head."
Poole compares Barnes' current predilection for jumping between styles within a single track to a film editor using jump cuts — Skeletal Lamping's Four our Elegant Caste, for example, skips between Motown bounce, new wave pop and Freddy Mercury's falsetto.
"There have been a million records that tell you a straight story and, really, is anybody going to do it better than Ray Davies?" he says.
Much of the impetus for the band's output comes from Georgie Fruit, a black, 40-something man who has undergone multiple sex reassignments. Near the end of writing Hissing Fauna, a particularly dark and personal record for Barnes, the composer claimed that Georgie Fruit has possessed him, writing the record's upbeat final compositions.
"Georgie kept on writing songs," confirms Poole. "Georgie doesn't filter his thoughts or emotions — everything comes to the fore.
"There are a lot of dark thoughts in your psyche that you don't want to come out except in the odd strange dream that you wouldn't even tell anyone about, but Georgie Fruit just lets it all hang out. His stuff is a bit more buoyant, if weirdly and perversely sexual."
Barnes, a 34-year-old married father of one, has since moved on from Georgie Fruit. "He's left the building," Poole notes. "We hunt out quite a bit — I'm going to miss Georgie."
Of Montreal play the Hi-Fi Bar on March 5 and Golden Plains festival on Saturday, March 7.
2009-02-18 - Honolulu Weekly
Pooled over
of Montreal brings sparkle and glitter back to Honolulu
In the Clubs
The band of Montreal born out of the artistic hub of Athens, Ga., home to the Elephant 6 music collective, seems to virtually re-incarnate itself musically every couple of years, picking up different kinds of fans with every release. Most easily described as indie pop, of Montreal’s sound has gone from mellower, more acoustic to pleasantly danceable to crazy techno-pseudo gay-glam-pop (imagine the lyrics, “We can do it soft core if you want/but you should know I take it both ways” in a disco fabulous male falsetto), utilizing more electronic tricks and kicks as time goes on. Bryan Poole, founding member and sidekick (as well as bassist and vocalist) to front man Kevin Barnes’ brainchild, summarized the evolution of Montreal’s sound over a phone interview with the Weekly, saying, “[Barnes] had a dogma about only listening to stuff from like 1967 or 1966 and anything after that was crap. We were really into psychedelic bands of the ’60s ‘cause they were just weird, [but Barnes probably realized] those bands were embracing the technology of the day and creating new worlds of art. If those bands were around today, they would just embrace everything. And we’ve always had this love of Bowie and Sly and the Family Stone. [Barnes] started writing these more funky songs and this character possessed him for a while and wrote a bunch of songs and so it’s just kind of like, ‘Fuck it, it’s OK if it sounds a little bit like Prince.’ And that’s all right.”
Poole, a University of Georgia political science major originally from Nashville, Tenn., and of The Olivia Tremor Control, took a few years off from of Montreal to play with Elf Power and work on his solo project, the Late B.P. Helium. His newer side project, with Macha’s Josh McKay, Tiny Sticks, plays house parties with covers of and music inspired by the ’80s band ESG. Since of Montreal, as Poole described matter-of-factly, “is basically Kevin’s thing…I’m just a supporter when Kevin needs me,” hearing about of Montreal’s collaborative side project that organically formed last year, Instant Witch, peaks one’s curiosity as to how it might sound. “We kind of present ideas on the fly…I have a couple of ideas, and one of them’s turned into this Afro-beat song.”
No matter what song or album encapsulates your favorite version of of Montreal, one fact that remains is that a live show is sure to be a spectacle. As Poole described, the band’s goal is to create “One freaky dance party…A dance party [Salvador] Dali would want to go to for a good time.” Melting guitars? Maybe. But costumes play a big factor, too. Poole re-called that “the tour before [this one], I had this Brian Eno thing with these big wings that this girl had been making me. It kind of turned into this glam superstar that would take flight every night.” But not wanting to get boxed into being the wing man, so to speak, Poole shared that, “Lately I’ve had a style that was weirdly influenced by Avril Lavigne. I don’t know why. You know it’s wearing a loose tie and a vest that belonged to my grandfather and no shirt, and wearing some nice pants to actually look somewhat masculine…hopefully a rockin’ hot dude. Before I had the wings, it was an all pink thing, fishnet top and these awesome designer pink pants. God, I wish I could find some more…”
While the band loves playing in the Islands (really, who doesn’t?), of Montreal will only be here for two days and play one show. “Hopefully we can make a lot of friends and go back and chill out,” hinted Poole. So make it worth of Montreal’s time and make way for grandpa vests, shiny stuff and possibly lots of pink. Find some costumes—both for yourselves and maybe the band—and don’t be afraid to show that you enjoy having a good time. The band members “like people having fun and boogying.” And don’t forget to save a place for Dali. Poole promises that for the Honolulu show, “We’ll make it as freaky as we possibly can.” —
Loft
2009-02-20 - The Honolulu Star
'Exponentially bigger & ridiculous now'
Of Montreal brings its wild show to town for one night at The Loft
By Gary C.W. Chun
Of Montreal brings its wild show to town for one night at The Loft
By Gary C.W. Chun
It's been a little more than three years since the indie rock fave band, of Montreal, last graced our island shores. The group returns downtown this weekend as the critically acclaimed brainchild of leader Kevin Barnes, who takes his inspiration from the likes of David Bowie and Prince in presenting lavish visuals alongside the music.
OF MONTREAL
Where: The Loft Gallery and Lounge, 115 Hotel St.
When: 8:30 p.m. Saturday
Tickets: $20
Visit: www.enterprise.bigcartel.com
The relatively small confines of the Loft Gallery and Lounge should be bursting at the seams trying to contain the concert. Even a scaled-down version of the group's theatrical spectacle will be extravagant; it's been in full bloom since Barnes revealed his polysexual alter ego Georgie Fruit on 2007's "Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?"
For an audio cue of what will probably transpire there, check out the last three songs on of Montreal's latest CD, "Skeletal Lampings." From the hedonism and sexual ambiguity of "Beware Our Nubile Miscreants," to the psychedelia of "MIngusings" and the heady brew of Technicolor disco-pop and avant tribal-beat contained in "Id Engager," it should make for an evening of free-wheeling gender play.
According to longtime band member Jamey Huggins, Hawaii is the kick-off point for the band's latest tour, which heads out to Australia next.
"Our shows have always been extravagant, except that they're exponentially bigger and ridiculous now," he said via phone last Friday while driving from Atlanta to the band's headquarters in Athens, Ga. "The biggest difference is the amount of personnel that comes out on tour. For the first nine years or so, we had (six to nine people) ... and then on our most recent tour we took as many as 19.
"On this tour, we're only going to be eight, very minimum, but we'll still do everything we can to put on a visual performance. We'll be bringing video, costumes and one performance artist-slash-actor-slash dancer," who Huggins identified as Barnes' brother and creative partner David.
"But for me, it's all about the music -- everything else is just the icing on the cake. It'll be a trade-off in the sense that the audience in Hawaii won't see the spectacle that we've staged in three- to four-thousand seat venues in New York or Los Angeles," he said.
"The difference with the smaller show is the intimacy. It'll be more about the music and the people in the room. We'll be practically be playing right next to you, so it'll be less of a circus and more of a personal experience."
Along with keyboardist Dottie Alexander, the multi-instrumental Huggins has been with of Montreal since its inception 11 years ago.
"The band is definitely Kevin's vision," Huggins said. "We've gone from a totally collaborative band to becoming mainly a live performance band, because about halfway through the band's existence, Kevin started recording just about everything himself for the albums. When computers and drum machines became available at his disposal, it was more fun for Kevin to do it pretty much himself. He had more success getting his ideas down, instead of relying on having to work with everyone's schedules.
"The problem is, since his music has so many ideas, it takes, like, 15 people to realize it live," he said.
While some fans think that of Montreal is all Kevin Barnes, Huggins said that's a misconception. "We all do everything. Where Kevin does have total control of the albums, he has little control of the live show. It's very much an open democracy between the band members, David and Kevin's wife, Nina. All of our ideas get thrown together in a pot, so to speak, and we'll use those that can both work financially and fit on stage."
Basically, Huggins admitted, "it's hard to describe where this is all coming from. The creative process in this band is so natural, it's difficult to describe such a surreal, visual thing that's changing all the time. Every leg of our tours have been different, so you won't see Kevin hanging himself on stage, or a live stallion on stage, or the giant rotating room with video screens attached. We did each of those thing for a month's time, and then dropped them."
Huggins is looking forward to some down time from the band to continue to pursue his own solo project as his alter ego, indie rocker James Husband. As Husband, he last released 2005's "Now Listen."
"After many years and long-awaited frustration, I'm definitely going to be doing a major tour," he said. "I've made homemade CDs available at our shows and I'm just waiting for a window in the of Montreal schedule to open up. I'm in the process of finishing the artwork for the new album, and it'll be the real deal."
2009-02-23 - Rave Magazine
| Of Montreal |  |  |  |
| Monday, 23 February 2009 | |
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1999: A shy, introverted man in his mid-20s sits in his room with only a cassette four-track machine for company, obsessively writing and recording his idiosyncratic, innocently psychedelic indie-pop. He is about to go on tour with his band. Onstage they will wear outlandish costumes and perform bizarrely surreal skits between songs. Unfortunately, as has been the case since the band began two years previous, not many people will attend the shows. 2009: A shy, introverted, man in his mid-30s sits in his room with only a computer for company, obsessively writing and recording his idiosyncratic, glammed-up psychedelic electro-pop. He is about to go on tour with his band. Onstage they will wear outlandish costumes and perform on a multi-tiered set along with several even more outlandishly attired dancers arraying themselves in peculiar (and in some cases borderline illegal) tableaux in front of several giant video screens. The shy introverted man has transformed into a booty-shaking funk Adonis in glittery make-up, hotpants and feather boa, who during the course of the show will engage in sword fights, sing while clad in a ten-foot-high dress (!), be led to the gallows and hung (!!!), and emerge from a coffin wearing nothing but whipped cream. Thousands of people worldwide are now attending the shows. Quite a difference a decade can make. Yet that’s been the unlikely journey of Kevin Barnes and his Athens, Georgia collective Of Montreal. Where once they were derisively dismissed as the overly twee runt of the Elephant 6 litter (the loose collective of like-minded, psychedelically inclined bands that also included The Apples In Stereo, The Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel and Elf Power), Of Montreal now regularly sell out shows throughout the US and Europe. Their music, meanwhile, has morphed from a childlike, hallucinogenic dream-world peopled by eccentric characters with names like Rose Robert, Nickee Coco and Coquelicot, to a sexed-up, electro-funk-psych-pop carnival led by Barnes’s alter-ego Georgie Fruit, a 40-something transsexual with a shady past and a taste for funky decadence. The change began on 2004’s Satanic Panic In The Attic, which found Barnes introducing electronic elements into his music for the first time, and flowered fully on 2007’s Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, a darkly autobiographical account of Barnes’ struggle with depression that introduced the Georgie character and a hefty dose of synthesised disco-funk sleaze. One suspects that this last element has played a role in the vast improvement of the group’s commercial fortunes over the last couple of years: an Of Montreal show has always been visually exciting, but unlike years past, the music is now perfect for shaking one’s booty most righteously. Speaking from his home in Athens, which he shares with his wife Nina, four-year-old daughter Alabee, and his brother David (who’s responsible for the band’s eye-searingly colourful album artwork) the charmingly softly spoken Barnes agrees that OM’s ever-more-ambitious live show is what’s turned things around for them. "People have really liked it a lot because we’re doing something different; they don’t really expect it. I think they appreciate that we’re trying to give them something exceptional, not boring." It’s a philosophy that’s certainly been applied to Of Montreal’s latest record, Skeletal Lamping. Musically it takes in elements from the band’s entire career – dreamy psychedelia, ’60s pop, Afrobeat, synth-funk – and throws in snatches of old-school soul, spare piano balladry, noise freakouts, and musique concrete for good measure. The main difference, though, is that this time the album is made up of a myriad of song fragments all strung together to form one continuous hour-long piece of music. While the idea is not new (side two of the Beatles’ Abbey Road immediately springs to mind), the way Barnes integrates such wildly disparate segments into a cohesive whole allows a breathtaking survey of the sheer breadth of a restless and overflowing musical imagination. "I just wanted to make something that felt more like a journey, something that never got boring or predictable," Barnes says. "Something that felt like more than just another collection of songs." The overall effect is of Barnes opening up his head and spilling out the contents – whether good, bad, ugly, nonsensical, sexy or just plain weird – and leaving the listener to decide what to make of it all. Such an unfiltered, warts-and-all approach would be an anathema to the majority of Barnes’ US indie contemporaries, those who can only convey their Very Important Emotions via tightly controlled, structured, buttoned-down guitar-bass-drums-and-not-too-much-personality-please-we’re-sensitive-American-indie-boys rock/pop. Ironically, by flying in the face of such conservative generic strictures, Barnes and Co. have finally ascended very close to the top of the indie mountain. "I think it’s important not to dumb things down or make things easily digestible or acceptable, just because you fear it won’t reach a large audience unless you do it that way," Barnes declares. "I don’t care about reaching a large audience; I just want to make something I find interesting and fulfilling. "I don’t think it’s really healthy for an artist to worry about how they’re going to be perceived," he continues. "You just have to do what feels natural, do what you’re naturally drawn to do, and then you hope that some people like it. But it’s really not important if they like it or not, it really doesn’t matter. You can’t expect everyone to like it, number one, and number two, it cheapens the experience for you if you’re worrying about that. For me, I wouldn’t get as much out of making music, I wouldn’t get as much out of the process if I was always second-guessing everything and worrying about whether some person I’ll never meet will like it or understand it." Still, one suspects that Barnes is positively revelling in the fact that, after a decade in the wilderness, Of Montreal are finally getting noticed. "I definitely feel more confident," he admits. "It makes you feel like you’re not just this meaningless ghost of a person. If no one buys the records and no one comes to the shows then it’s harder – slightly harder anyway – to feel confident in what you’re doing; you have to maybe consider that your voice is not needed in this world." Of course Australia is only just beginning to wake up to the band, and one suspects OM’s first-ever Australian tour will do much to boost their profile here, even if logistics prevent them bringing all of their stage-set and props. "It’s too expensive to fly the gallows over and a lot of other stuff over. We’ll definitely do something visual and theatrical though," Barnes promises. So with his band riding a wave of critical and commercial success at present, can Kevin Barnes still relate to the shy, introverted bedroom recording enthusiast of a decade ago? "Yeah, pretty much. I mean, the spirit’s the same. People ask me, ‘how do you think you’ve grown artistically or musically over the years?’, and I really don’t think I have, you know? It’s the same spirit driving me: I’m really excited about music, I love the art form, and I’m really motivated and ambitious just like I was back then. The source of the inspiration has stayed pretty true through the years." OF MONTREAL play The Zoo on Wednesday March 4. SKELETAL LAMPING is out now through Popfrenzy. Check out www.ofmontreal.net and www.myspace.com/ofmontreal for more information. |
Success proved elusive for OF MONTREAL until frontman and main creative force KEVIN BARNES threw some sleazy electro-funk grooves and an existential crisis into the mix. Now the Georgia-based troupe are one of US indie’s shining lights, because, as Barnes tells BRETT COLLINGWOOD, "artists who take chances are more interesting than artists that take the easy route".2009-02-04 - Drowned In Sound
DiS meets Of Montreal - part #2
In the second part of our in depth interview, Brainlove & Alcxxk met with Kevin Barnes on the eve of the inauguration to talk Barack Obama, lampshade vs CD vs vinyl, 70s funk, dancing buddhas, and what comes next for Of Montreal.
DiS: Are you feeling positive about the new presidency, like there'll be real change, or do you think a lot of it's hype?
KB: "Well it's definitely good superficially, the symbolism of a black man in power, politics has been dominated by wealthy white men and that's not healthy. It might seem superficial, I mean Condoleeza Rice was black but she was as white as anyone in her thinking. Just because you're black doesn't mean you're going to be progressive. But I think Barack... there's a lot of rhetoric and his rhetoric is very positive, so I'm hoping there's something more behind it."
DiS: Do you have a suggested to-do list for Barack Obama?
KB: "I think setting up more accountability in the government and in corporations. Republicans feel like the government should stay out of the private sector, and I'm not sure that's such a healthy thing, because we've proven ourselves to be not the most moral characters. You can do a lot of things if you're protected by it being business. Business ethics is almost like a contradiction in terms, people seem to think they can get away with things that are inhumane because it's the business that's doing it not them personally. I feel like we need watchdogs that are gonna make corporations protect their employees and regulate products so we don't get products that hurt people. We have a lot of crap from China that makes people sick... I'm suspicious of the food and drug administration, and their ability to control quality.
But there's a number of things... obviously it'd be difficult for one man and one administration to change things, but obviously there's ecology and more green policies, that's essential."
DiS: You guys have been around for a long time now and built up slowly. What do you think about the rapid turnover of bands getting signed and dropped earlier and earlier in their career?
KB: "Well we've been around since 1997, and we've never ever really had that much support from labels or from the press or the industry in general, but we kept trucking along because we just love making music. What I get from music doesn't come from the outside world, I get it internally. It doesn't matter that much to me if it sells and if it gets good reviews and people come to the shows. That's not the motivating factor. For me the creative process keeps me going. A label couldn't keep me from making music. I mean, if I wasn't getting support from my label, I'd just say 'fuck you' and go figure out a way to make it work. Forever we weren't selling shit, you know, we had day jobs. I had one operating a spotlight at a circus, but that was an interesting one - we've had miserable stuff. Video stores, telemarketing, soul-sucking non-committal jobs that we could leave and come back in a month from a tour, reapply and just get it again. They need people because nobody can stand to work there for more than a couple of weeks.
If you think about it realistically and you're on a major label, you're an investment. You're like any other product. These people are investing money in it, and if they're not seeing a return on that they don't have a reason to keep you. There's no big artistic ideas about what they're doing. You don't get people thinking "I'm so proud of working at Universal because we get to give the world Christina Aguilera" or whatever, you know? But if you're on an indie and they don't expect you to sell more than five or ten thousand records, and their overheads are so low that you can't really fail as long as you have a good relationship with the label, and they're into it it and you want to keep doing it, you don't have a problem. It's a problem if you really want to strike it rich, that scene is superficial and unhealthy. It's better to be on a label that doesn't really expect you to sell a certain amount and they believe in what you're doing and they wanna be part of it, and it becomes more like a family."
DiS: How's your side-project (Blikk Fang) with MGMT going?
KB: "It's slow going right now, we've both been traveling and touring. I've been building a studio, I haven't had a studio for a while, and he's been out of pocket and doing different things, so hopefully it'll happen this year. It's one of my new year's resolutions to make that happen."
DiS: You've said your inspiration comes from older pop music - how do you think 'hit factories' like Motown, which came out of the soul, gospel and blues tradition, compares with similar things today?
KB: "Not very inspired and not very exciting. But then every once in a while there's something great. There are actually a lot of songs that come out of the major label system that are really cool, like Britney Spears' Toxic, but there's a lot of crap. But there's just as many crap indie bands. Well, I say crappy, but I mean it just doesn't appeal to me, and I don't think it's good. But that doesn't mean they shouldn't put out records or whatever. I think it's easy to romanticise a period that you're not involved in, to fall into that trap of thinking something that happened a long time ago is more interesting, but there were probably kids born in 1968 who hated The Beatles for being so commercial and just were like 'John Lennon, just go away' or whatever.
Production has a lot to with it too I think. I love the sound of the 60s and 70s. You can't ever really duplicate the sound of those old records because technology moves on. You can try but it'll just end up like a retro sounding record. And that can make older records more interesting because nobody's making things that sound like that any more. That's one thing I love is that when you record music it's like a time capsule, it's put down and it can never be replicated.
A lot of what I listen to is because I like the sound of it. I'm listening to Sly and The Family Stone, their record 'There's a Riot Going On' is one of my favourites. And I love Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield's 'Curtis' is one of my faves by him. I listen to Mingus, 60s and 70s. For a long time that was the only stuff I listened to and I didn't wanna listen to anything contemporary, it had no charm. No mystery.
But I'm more in touch with my contemporaries now. I'm really, really excited about what people are doing now - Animal Collective's new record is fantastic, and I love Gang Gang Dance. Now I really wanna make music that's progressive so I'm listening to my contemporaries and drawing from what they do more than I ever have in the past. I mean, The Kinks, Ray Davies' songwriting, John Lennon and Pete Townsend, those are my idols. But I am looking more to my contemporaries now."
DiS: I've seen you play with a couple of different setups, with backing tracks, and with two drummers, which I thought added a lot...
"Yeah? We've actually gone back to one drummer. It was great to have Ahmed, but we're so used to playing to playing to the backing track, and it's so hard to play to the backing track and have a live drummer. So we had a click track in our ears, and it was so demoralizing, you know? It was so hard to get into with this "clack, clack, clack" in the background through every single song. So it's almost better on a personal level to play to the backing tracks just to not have to have the click. But we'd like to eventually have another full time drummer, having someone actually play the drums is so much more visually interesting than just a CD player or an iPod. But a lot of bands do it, I mean I could just do it by myself and put everything on the backing track, some people don't have any musicians. But I think it's a better experience for the audience to have as many people onstage playing instruments as possible."
DiS: Is the theatrical show with extras and costumes something that you always wanted to do, or did it grow alongside the stages sizes and possibilities?
"It's all kind of learning as we go. Well we always wanted to do something visually interesting and create these almost photographic moments, cinematic moments that'll just look good. A lot of stuff you have to process so quickly in the audience, we wanted it to be over-stimulating, so that people will talk about later over coffee and be like 'do you remember that part, and what about that part'."
DiS: Do you have a frame of reference laid out for the visual iconography, or is it more free form than that?
KB: "Yeah it's more like the series of wild ideas. We tried to do all kinds of visual things like the golden buddhas, we're like 'can it be done?' and then we take it as a challenge and try to make it happen. A lot of the people in the band are also artistic and crafty, like our sound guy helped build the set, our bass player does electronic and built the fog machines. It's an exciting thing, having an idea and making it happen. It's the same spirit with the collection of objects that go with the records, like the Chinese lantern with my wife's artwork. Polyvinyl helped out and got their interns involved and all these different people involved to make it a reality. It's so awesome to have an idea and then figure out a way to make it real."
DiS: Did the thinking for the equally flamboyant formats of Skeletal Lamping come from the band, or was that from the label?
"Well we were thinking that now that the industry is in a difficult position and needs to rethink everything, artists actually have more power - we can say, let's try this idea or this idea, and they might so okay, whereas before a label might have said the cost was prohibitive or whatever. But now they need to create value in objects again... Polyvinyl were really supportive, another label might have said no. I hope it catches on, it would be really cool if you went in not knowing what the record you wanted was going to be..."
DiS: That would be great! Choosing between the formats of boiler suit or kitchenware...
KB: "Yeah, then there'd be another function, if you're going to download it anyway you might as well get a piece of silverware that you're gonna use every day."
DiS: Do you collect any formats or are you an MP3 person?
KB: "Well, I don't collect anything really. I like vinyl but not an extreme enthusiast, for me it's all about listening. I only have a crappy turntable so I don't even have good stereo. I listen to more on my computer. But I do like the physical weight of the vinyl, it's an impressive physical object. CD I hate, I can't stand the plastic, it drives me crazy. Polyvinyl are great, they release everything on big heavy quality vinyl, it's always gatefold, they spend a lot of time on the packaging."
DiS: How did you feel about the slightly cooler critical reception Skeletal Lamping has had compared to Hissing Fauna?
"Well, I'm a fan of Drowned In Sound, it was one of the few places that really got Skeletal Lamping. Drowned In Sound gave us the review that I kinda hoped Pitchfork would give, it really got the record."
DiS: I've found Skeletal Lamping to be a record I love more and more after struggling with it at first, but then Hissing Fauna was like that too...
KB: "Yeah? I think, some music you don't really get straight away, like Fiery Furnaces or Animal Collective, it's not as easily classifiable and some people get frustrated because they don't get much time or whatever, and they have deadlines to review. I sometimes get people say 'I gave this a really crappy review and now I really like it'. I remember Neutral Milk Hotel In the Airplane Over The Sea got really crappy reviews, but now it's considered a masterpiece. A lot of times people jump too quickly but I guess they come around to it later. I mean, I spend a whole year working on a record, and sometimes a journalist will get like only a few listens or days to create a whole synopsis or description of the record that people can use as a reference."
DiS: You played the Hissing Fauna live show for a really long time, are you planning to do the same with Skeletal Lamping?
KB: "Yeah, we've already done a lot of Skeletal Lamping shows, this is our second time here on this record, we have Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Singapore in March and then th US again in April. We're hoping to come back over here for the summer festivals."
DiS: And are you working on new stuff?
KB: "Yeah I am. It's probably gonna be even less accessible... I wanna make something progressive, maybe not pulling as much from my outside influences, but something more personal, something only I could make, not like genre-hopping pieces where I'm channelling Prince or channelling Sly Stone... a lot of the stuff I've been doing has clear reference points like Arthur Russell or Brian Eno or whoever, you know. And that was the fun thing, doing collage work, pulling from other people and putting into this blend. But what I wanna do now is really create something a bit more esoteric, that's the direction I'm going in, that's what I'm excited about. More textural, more atmospheric, still with lyrics, for me at least it's good to have lyrics, that's interesting, and then musically what has developed so far is like a controlled chaos, things rising up for a moment and taking your attention then being overtaken by something else. In abstract terms I see it like an oceanic storm, but it wasn't water it was all these different kinds of substances, all intermingling or fighting each other, then a wave comes up and breaks, and you see it and get a bit of it's personality, and then it sinks back down into the chaos, and it's gone again."
2009-01-23 - Drowned In Sound
Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes turns agony uncle - plus exclusive live video
John Brainlove and Chris Alcock caught up with Kevin Barnes on the eve of Of Montreal's sold-out Heaven gig with Franz Ferdinand. In part one of the interview they seek some advice from the hyper-sexual, cross-dressing indie-glam icon on the problems being DiScussed recently on the boards...
John Brainlove: So one DiS user has the problem of always seeing the same attractive girl at the bus stop on the way to work and not knowing what to say, do you have any advice for him?
Kevin Barnes: I think it's just to say hello, right? I mean, if they're always at the same bus stop together I'm sure she's not a temp, and if there's any chance of it happening you just have to be confident. You know, it sounds like a cliché but women definitely appreciate a confident man, if you're all shy and insecure they might think there's a reason why you're shy and insecure, whereas if you come across as not cocky but comfortable about yourself then that's the most attractive thing...
Chris Alcock: And how would you suggest he go about that?
KB: I think saying "hi" is a good icebreaker... [Laughs]. But then you have to have something to follow it up... most people don't want to cause an awkward situation, so you could say something superficial like "I like your scarf, where did you get it?" or whatever, and then you know, "Oh, I had this funny dream last night" and just get the thing rolling, and if there's chemistry it'll happen organically, and if you're not meant for each other then it'd be awkward and you wouldn't want to be with that person anyway. A lot of people might think someone's really great because they're attractive, but that doesn't last. But there might be a reason why you're attracted to them, you shouldn't try to second guess it... but this is turning into general love advice now.
JB: Sean tells us there's a hot potato of a thread about suede trainers going on... any footwear tips?
KB: I like slip ons, canvas trainers... I have on blue ones, I like colour, I always wear colourful socks and shoes. It's the sad thing about male fashion, it's really difficult to find colourful items, it's always dull brown, black, gray... greige. Greige? Yeah, greige, a cross between gray and beige.
JB: Next we have - "would you stop drinking if your boyfriend or girlfriend asked?"
KB: Uh, no. I don't drink much though. But it's not really a reasonable request. But I mean if your drinking creates problems or turns you into an asshole then that's not gonna be very good for a relationship... or if you're like getting beating up or getting into fights. I think it's good to get a buzz on or lose your inhibitions or whatever, that's healthy, but not to drink recklessly, if you get to the point where you're puking that's not so good. Puking is the line for me. I mean I can be jumping on tables and that's okay, but as long as I'm not puking then I haven't crossed the line.
JB: So - "Scone" as in "con" or "scone" as in "cone"?
KB: I say it like "cone"...
JB: Ah, Queen's English...
KB: Is that a thing? I've only heard 'King's English'...
CA: I guess it depends who's on the throne.
JB: One more - there's a thread by a guy who wants to know how to last longer in bed.
KB: I think a good trick is... if you don't come within the first couple of minutes then you can last a lot longer. It could be a bit awkward if you're super excited to be with the person and you have to pace yourself or maybe pull out for a little bit or something. They say thinking about other things is a good trick, like being in school or whatever. But I wouldn't think about like, your grandma's vagina, it'd kill the erection, you don't wanna ruin the moment. You still have to participate and be there emotionally, not just physically. It's a tricky thing. The more comfortable you are with the person, the easier it is... when you're a bit insecure or nervous you have your worst performances. You have to accept that the first time might be awkward, it'll be fun and exciting but it usually won't be the best time. If you're with someone you've been attracted to for a long time, in my experience, you have better sex because you're both comfortable with each other and it's fun.
2009-01-?? - I Heart AU
Words by Chris Jones
In every self-respecting artist’s career, there comes a time for reinvention. Unless you’re Oasis, you have little chance of long-term survival and critical appreciation unless you take the odd risk; push the boundaries of who you are and what you are capable of. The Beatles, short as their career was, did it several times. Radiohead continue to delight and confound expectation at every turn. But no-one is as synonymous with the idea of complete, fearless reinvention as David Bowie, and Kevin Barnes, who to all intents and purposes is of Montreal, knows this well.
Now on his ninth studio album in 11 years, Barnes is at a creative peak. Of Montreal’s last album, 2007’s masterful Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, continued his gradual shift from the bright indie-pop of his earlier career to lyrically darker and musically more varied climes. However, 18 months on he is now back with a new album, Skeletal Lamping, and it is immediately obvious that he has no intention of standing still. The musical range is yet broader, encompassing everything from cacophonous guitar noise (‘Nonpareil Of Favor’) and avant-garde freakouts (‘Plastis Wafers’) to his more usual pop, soul and funk. And that’s without mentioning the dizzying sound mosaic he has created, or his decision to perform much of the album in character. On the latter point, Barnes’ Bowie fixation is most marked.
Just as Bowie introduced Ziggy Stardust in 1972 as his career was taking off, so Barnes (albeit on a much smaller commercial scale) introduced the character of Georgie Fruit, a middle-aged black transsexual soul singer, on Hissing Fauna, and he plays a much bigger role on Skeletal Lamping. Barnes says that the title – which first appeared as a lyric on Hissing Fauna track ‘Faberge Falls For Shuggie’ – initially had no meaning.
“At first it wasn’t really about anything,” he says, “it was these two words that popped into my head. I gave it meaning later, and the obvious one that cropped up, to me, was thinking of these skeletons from your closet that you’re bringing to the surface.”
Or shining a light on – the word ‘lamping’ refers to the cruel hunting practice of shining powerful lamps on prey in order that they panic and are therefore easy pickings. The title is an appropriate metaphor for the task of exposing raw, often sexually explicit subject matter, as expressed through the medium of Georgie Fruit. It seems like a bizarre step, but Barnes is happy to admit that Ziggy was a major influence on his decision to introduce a character to his work.
“I think, definitely, I would never have come up with any of this stuff if it wasn’t for people like David Bowie, and Ray Davies and Prince,” he says. “People that created these different personas for themselves and recreated themselves from album to album. Those are the people that I look at and say, ‘This is great’, because there’s always a fear of repeating yourself in music. You put out five or six records and there’s a tendency for people to get trapped in this one thing that they think defines them as an artist or a band or whatever, and I found that that very limiting; I never want to do that. So it’s great to see these other people that are willing to take chances and really do different things throughout their careers. It’s almost like they become different artists in different periods, and they can be different people.”
Georgie’s libidinous stamp is all over Skeletal Lamping. From the stark proclamation, “I’m just a black shemale / And I don’t know what you people are all about” on ‘Wicked Wisdom’, followed swiftly by the strident “We can do it softcore if you want / But you should know I take it both ways” (‘For Our Elegant Caste’), we are left in no doubt as to who we are dealing with. For Barnes, creating Georgie was a form of escapism after the struggles with depression, medication and his faltering marriage that had blighted him and provided much of the lyrical inspiration for Hissing Fauna.
“He sprouted up around the time of my depression period,” he explains. “When I was coming out of [that] and becoming slightly more healthy, this little figure sort of popped in my head. It’s kind of abstract and difficult to explain, because it’s not really a split personality situation where it’s like, ‘Georgie Fruit is talking right now’, you know what I mean? It’s almost like a songwriting device.
“Psychologically, I could say that maybe it was a necessary thing that had to happen for me. I was sick of being trapped in this circular, negative spiral where I was obsessing over my internal feelings about whatever, like depression, anxiety, paranoia, suicidal thoughts, all that shit. I was really getting sick of that and wanting to explode and go somewhere new. I think creating this character helped me put all that stuff in the past and move forward and feel, ‘OK, this is fresh, this is exciting, this is different, this is new. It’s not connected at all to that darkness’.”
He is, however, quick to stress that he hasn’t fully assumed the character of Georgie Fruit to the extent that Bowie became Ziggy, conducting press conferences and giving interviews in character. “I don’t want people thinking that Skeletal Lamping is in any way a concept album or that I’m singing from the perspective of this fictional character,” he insists. “It isn’t like that. Creating Georgie Fruit gave me the ability to give a voice to this other aspect of my psyche, and it’s sort of pretentious and difficult to really say it, but I feel this sort of thing was unlocked inside of me, and I gave it a name. It was not really necessary to give it a name, but I think it helped me go to a place that I’ve never been before. It gave me a defence or something.”
So the words on the album are Barnes’s alone, even though he himself has given the character a name and a backstory. Georgie and Kevin are one and the same. Sort of. It’s a confusing and slightly troubling distinction. But maybe he felt like he needed to give himself some distance in order to be able to tackle his sexuality in such a fearless and often alarming way. The album is peppered with references to sex, often with outrageously comedic effect. To imagine these words coming from a skinny, floppy-haired, 34-year-old white man is frankly bizarre, but it’s a topic that he felt inexorably – and involuntarily – drawn to.
“I didn’t really decide to do it, I just felt compelled to do it,” he insists. “I try to work that way, I try not to second-guess myself or direct myself in any way, really just let whatever the organic, creative spirit wants to happen, happen. I did realise that, ‘OK, this is a pretty sexual record’, but it didn’t bother me or anything.”
With the record having leaked months before its October release date, Barnes has had plenty of time to gauge the online response from the band’s devoted fanbase and the media. With of Montreal’s status as one of the biggest underground bands in the world, and with such a huge back catalogue for fans to get their teeth into, there is no shortage of discussion online. Reviews have largely positive, though the critical acclaim hasn’t been as deafening and unanimous as that which greeted Hissing Fauna. Nevertheless, the fan response has largely been excellent, and Barnes has clearly been keeping an eye on it.
“So far it’s been really good,” he says. “Initially, when I was making it, I was a bit nervous that people would be not as into it or not prepared for it. But then I realised that it’s not really that far-out. It’s not really that shocking, so I didn’t really give people enough credit. It’s not completely out-there. The only thing that’s really unconventional about it is addressing bisexuality in a very open way. There’s so many really heterosexual songs, and then there’s new things sprouting up like “I kissed a girl and I liked it” or whatever. It was just the spirit of the time, people were becoming more open-minded to those sort of things.”
Though Barnes is married, his flamboyant, androgynous image – coupled with the new album’s lyrical content – begs the question as to how he defines his own sexuality, especially as he hasn’t chosen to disassociate himself from his latest set of lyrics.
“I don’t really try to say I’m this or I’m that,” he says, matter-of-factly. “I don’t even necessarily think it’s healthy to define yourself in that way. You might have characteristics of one thing or another from one day at a time, and if you’re open-minded I guess you could say you’re bisexual. So I guess I could say I’m bisexual, but I’ve never dated a guy. I’ve never had a long-term relationship with a guy, so I can’t really say that. But maybe, 10 years from now, I will.”
Aside from Georgie and the fixation with sex, a third aspect of Skeletal Lamping has set tongues wagging – the music mosaic alluded to earlier. Rampant eclecticism has long been a feature of of Montreal’s records, but here that approach is taken to its logical conclusion, and applied not just to an hour-long record, but to four-minute songs. We had fair warning of this last year, when Barnes stated in an interview with an Australian website: “I am going to create a bunch of 30-to-50-second sections and string them all together. I don’t think there will be any pauses between pieces. I want it to feel like one long piece with hundreds of movements.”
He has been almost as good as his word. Coherent songs do appear from time to time (first single ‘Id Engager’, ‘An Eluardian Instance’, the excellent Seventies piano rock pastiche ‘And I’ve Seen A Bloody Shadow’), but throughout the rest of the album, ideas come and go with bewildering speed. Hooks, lyrical ideas and melodies threaten to burrow into your brain before, tantalisingly, being snatched away. It’s a frustrating experience, but strangely addictive and reminiscent of bands like Wire, the Minutemen and Guided By Voices (who Barnes specifically cites as an inspiration). The difference is, those bands finished the song when the idea was up. Barnes doesn’t; he just heads straight into the next musical motif without finishing the “song”. Why do it?
“Mainly just to create an interesting arrangement,” he reasons. “I feel like a lot of songwriters use repetition out of laziness, or just because that’s the conventional thing to do. You know, pop songs can be so predictable and, to me, they lose their value when they’re like that. It’s like you know exactly what’s going to happen, and it’s just boring. So I wanted to make a record that destroys that pop template. It’s kind of arbitrary – I could easily have put the track markers anywhere. It’s not like these four sections work any better than these six sections, but it’s kind of fun too when you’re open in that way – anything goes and you can do any sort of tempo changes or key changes or musical style changes, wherever you want to do it. I really tried to keep it interesting for myself.”
All the same, Barnes acknowledges that this approach might infuriate some listeners, who hear a glorious 30-second section and fantasise about Barnes turning it into fully-fledged, three minute pop song. “Yeah, I can definitely see that. Going back to David Bowie, he has that record Low, where he fades the song out. He makes a one minute song, or a minute-and-a-half or whatever, that’s so amazing and you want it to go on for another two minutes. But it’s kind of sweet in that way that it’s short and you go, ‘Aw, I want to hear it again!’, so you go back and listen to it again. There’s something to say about not getting what you want, but getting a taste of it.” Leave them wanting more? “Yeah, like if you get some dessert or something that’s so delicious, but you only get three bites. But if you’d had 10 bites, you would’ve been sick of it.”
Talking to Barnes even for a short time, it is very apparent that he is borderline obsessive about music. With such a prolific record over the last decade, that’s no surprise. However, he is also refreshingly – unduly – modest about his capabilities as a songwriter, musician, performer and producer. When asked if he feels unable to limit his sound, a sound that has touched upon so many different styles in what is often – by now erroneously – labelled an indie-pop project, his answer is simple:
“I don’t really want to. For me, what’s exciting about making music is pulling all these references together. I don’t really think of myself as terribly original. All I’m really doing is taking all these other people’s good ideas and putting them together in my own way. That’s all I can really do.”
That said, he knows that if this is all he can do (and it plainly isn’t), he is among the best around at it. He doesn’t offer any doubt that he will have the opportunity to keep making music for as long as he wants, and he sees himself doing it into old age, as his heroes have done.
“I look at people like Robert Wyatt or Fela Kuti, people that never really stop making interesting music. There’s plenty of people who have really long careers, but they’re completely irrelevant because they stopped taking chances and they just keep spinning out the same crap over and over again. I don’t want to be like that. For me, my main goal is to always stay excited and to continue moving, and developing and changing, and doing different things. Kind of like what David Bowie did. He went through so many different periods and so many different phases, and he’s left the world with so much to dissect and go through and explore. That’s definitely my goal.”
Skeletal Lamping is out now on Polyvinyl2009-01-26 - Sweet Oblivion
Of Montreal interview - finally here!
Here's an interview I did with of Montreal frontman Kevin Barnes two months ago...I am unspeakably excited about the gig this Wednesday in The Button Factory!
This is one of my favourite pieces I've written, hopefully I did the band justice.
Labyrinthian Pomp
By Aoife Barry
Why play by the rules when you can set the rulebook on fire and dance on the flames? For Athens, Georgia-based band of Montreal, music isn’t something that has to be constrained by rules and regulations – who says things have to go verse-chorus-verse? Since the band was first formed by Kevin Barnes back in the late 1990s, they’ve gone from a pretty traditional lo-fi band to an all-out psychedelic group that bring their listeners on a wild trip through a world where the word ‘normal’ is banned. Key to this is the band’s theatrical live performances, which have recently seen Barnes bound on stage naked or astride a white horse. Who knows what we should expect when they play Dublin on January 28th.
It’s been a long journey for of Montreal – through more than 20 releases, numerous side projects, the famed Elephant 6 Recording Company collective (which also produced Neutral Milk Hotel amongst other bands), extended stays in Norway, marriage, childbirth, break-ups and make-ups. But through it all, they’ve kept evolving, kept pushing the boat out and creating music that breaks down the notion of what ‘pop’ music really is. Their work was eventually recognised with the release of the dark ‘Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?’ in 2007 – and now, with ‘Skeletal Lamping’, things are about to seriously explode for this close-knit band. They’re currently in the middle of a US tour and will be back in Europe in the New Year – and they’re bringing with them a stage show that’s a feast for the eyes and the ears.
“Our show is theatrical,” explains an ebullient Kevin Barnes backstage before a show in Tampa, Florida. “We have three or four performance artists on stage with us and they’re doing a bunch of different things. We have little skits and things like that. But all the while we’re just playing the songs from the records and stuff. It’s almost like a meta-style performance where there’s all these things happening at the same time. Sometimes the things go along with the music; sometimes they’re just completely independent. We basically just wanted to create a dynamic entertaining visual performance to go along with the music.”
Creating a dynamic entertaining visual performance? If that involves Barnes evoking the spirit of a 40+ year old African American transsexual called Georgie Fruit, the band dressing in eccentric outfits and make-up while acrobats dance around beside them, then of Montreal have got it down pat. It’s interesting, then, that it’s considered pretty unusual for this to happen – for a band like of Montreal to put together a theatre performance rather than a typical live gig. Why is it that other bands don’t do this?
“A lot of bands, they don’t really think about it, you know?” muses Barnes. “Like they’re worried about getting the music right and that’s it – of course you have to get the music right, that goes without saying. But I think we’ve been doing it for so long that it keeps it interesting for us.” But it’s not just interesting for the band. “I’m sure it’s really fun to see this ‘cos, I guess, just because it’s not a static show,” agrees Barnes. “It’s something we’ve sort of been building up to for a while – we’ve always wanted to have interesting visual elements along with the performance, and try to just do something exceptional –something that no one else has done, or something people weren’t expecting.”
Another thing that’s been pretty unexpected, for the band at least, is the sudden interest in them. They’ve gone beyond being a small indie band and onto something much, much bigger. “It’s great ‘cos we’ve been a band for a very long time,” says an obviously delighted, yet bemused, Barnes. “In Europe it’s taking even longer but in the United States it’s taken us seven years of touring non-stop, sleeping on people’s floors and making no money. So finally, after riding it out like that for a really long time we’ve finally reached an audience. And in Europe we’re still building it up, we’re nowhere near as well known in Europe as we are in the states, so it’s another challenge. It’s fun playing in Europe because it’s still exciting.”
It’s exciting too for the band to feel that at last, after eight albums, people are finally starting to ‘get it’. “I feel really fortunate that people are paying attention to what we’re doing now,” admits Barnes. “I know very well what it’s like on the other side - we put out really interesting creative records long before ‘Hissing Fauna’ but no one really bought them, no one really liked them. We always did what we wanted to do, we always did what we were compelled to do and what we were excited about.”
But the years of being relatively unknown have taught the band something, says Barnes. “I think in a way, all those years of being commercially unsuccessful were really positive for us because now we’ve realised what we like about it is the process of creating, and not about playing shows in front of lots of people or selling records or being on TV or whatever – it’s all about the creative process and what that does for you emotionally, intellectually, spiritually or whatever. We have a really good work ethic and that’s really important.”
Although he describes it as “kind of traumatising to struggle and struggle and struggle along and see all these bands becoming popular around you”, there still seems to be part of Kevin Barnes that is always going to be surprised at the band’s success. “It’s really kind of shocking that people like it,” he says incredulously, “because it’s not really in line with what is trendy. I’m always surprised when we play shows that there’s a lot of people there – like “are you people cheering for me? You’re really cheering for us? You really like us?”...I’m just like amazed, really excited and really happy and kind of shocked.”
Barnes generally records the of Montreal albums at home, eschewing studios and the corporate ‘machine’. He says he’s glad to see the record industry “failing” because it encourages bands to go the independent route. “If anything there are a lot of bands like us that are doing this on their own because they love it and not because they wanna sell,” he says. “That’s the worst thing in the world, to make music to sell.” But of Montreal recently sold three of their songs to be used in commercials in the United States. How does he reconcile this with his independent attitude? “I think there’s a difference between creating something because you want to sell it, and then selling something that you’ve already created, in a pure way,” is how he explains this decision. “If someone comes to me and says “I wanna use your song in a commercial”, it’s just kind of like, “great, because I have no money and this is gonna help me make more music”.”
He compares this to directors or actors doing big budget films to make money for art projects: “of Montreal is just like my art project and like any other thing it needs money to survive.” “It’s just an unfortunate aspect of things – if you don’t have money, you have to hustle a bit – that’s a fact of life,” elaborates the musician, who says he will be embarking on some new projects in 2009, including an album with Andrew VanWyngarden from MGMT. “But I agree I don’t like the idea of my song being in a commercial – I would much prefer to not do that. I would much prefer to keep it pure and everyone would have their own personal relationship and it wouldn’t be sullied in any way. But that’s not reality.”
And with that he’s off, back to his own reality, a shape-shifting, gender-bending world of beautiful freaks and monsters.
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