2011-05-10 - Spectrum Culture

Interview: Kevin Barnes from Of Montreal

May 10, 2011 3:35 PM

Whether he's exorcizing personal demons on the harrowing, yet poppy Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? or putting on a stage show with skull masks and people dressed as imaginary creatures, Kevin Barnes and Of Montreal continue to push up against the confines of indie rock. From breaking down traditional song structures on Skeletal Lamping to getting his best Bootsy Collins on with False Priest, Barnes may just make the most fun music about personal trauma and sexual desire. I was fortunate to spend 45 minutes speaking with Barnes about the creative process, Sufjan Stevens, his influences and selling out. I am proud to present the Spectrum Culture interview with Kevin Barnes from Of Montreal.

Your new EP Thecontrollersphere seems like a departure from what you were doing with False Priest.

Well, the songs were written and recorded around that same time period. It's very much a sister release to False Priest. There were songs that could have been on False Priest, but for whatever reason didn't make the cut.

I read an interview with you that said when you were making False Priest you were consciously trying to keep the length of the album down. Were these the songs that got cut off or a different batch of songs?

I only briefly toyed with putting "Black Lion Massacre" on False Priest but "L'age D'or" and "Slave Translator" were definitely intended for False Priest, but I cut them at the last minute.

I feel like the music on False Priest is more traditionally constructed pop songs while these break down the structure of traditional songs, especially the first track.

Yeah, definitely. On False Priest I was trying to make something that was a bit more accessible. Just a really well put together pop record without asking too much from the listener. Some of the Controllersphere songs are a bit more esoteric and not really for everyone.

Was that decision for the format of False Priest a reaction to Skeletal Lamping? That one definitely demands more from the listener.

Maybe to some degree, instead of making another Skeletal Lamping. I was excited to make something different than that.

You mention all of these titles on Hissing Fauna near the end. Was there a conscious trilogy in your mind at that point or did it come after you wrote the lyrics?

It just sort of happened organically. I didn't have a real vision of how the records would sound. I just knew those would be the titles for the next three records that followed Hissing Fauna.

Did those titles play on any obsessions of yours or were they free association?

They are definitely more free associations. At the time, I was just trying to come up with interesting song titles and that was part of the process. I got three album titles out of it.

Speaking of titles, the song titles on this new EP are less esoteric, to use your word, than many of your past ones.

I kind of go back and forth on that. You can name it anything you want to. You can give it a name people recognize and would make sense or give it a name that has a connected meaning with the song or maybe it doesn't. Sometimes I feel like giving it a totally sensible title and sometimes I feel like giving it some other kind of title. Like "L'age D'or," for example, I could have easily called it "She's My Party Drug" or something stupid like that. I guess a lot of times when you think a lyric is powerful or interesting then you can put more of a focus on it by titling the song that way. If you don't really care or don't really feel that strongly about any of the lyrics or you don't really want to put a spotlight on them then you give it some other title.

Traditionally bands title their songs after the chorus because it's the hook. Where with "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse," most people would probably call it the "chemicals" song.

Exactly. Especially with Hissing Fauna there's so many Norwegian words that nobody can really pronounce. It's not like I would even know how to say it either and I lived there for that time period. Titling songs is a slippery slope sometimes.

Is "L'Age d'Or" a direct reference to the Buñuel film?

Yeah.

It seems to me a lot of your music practices the same principles as of Surrealism. Two major hallmarks of Surrealism are sexuality and savage desire. Those are things you are not shy about putting into your music.

Definitely not. I think we share the same spirit. The same excitement about life and its potential and being broad-minded and open to new experiences. Exploring different aspects of the psyche.

Do you notice a difference in reaction between American and European audiences when it comes to the sexual and violent parts of the stage show?

Not really. It's pretty much the same when we go to Europe or other countries. I think we appeal to a certain kind of person all over the world. That kind of person is definitely in the minority as far as human beings go. But there's a good contingent of them all over the world. We're pretty much playing to same species of human or whatever you want to call it.

We have a pretty puritanical country here and if you played a show for non-Of Montreal fans they would definitely be more upset about you taking a person in a pig costume from behind than people shooting at one another on the stage.

Yeah, but I think it's always very cartoony. Unless you have no sense of humor you will probably find most of the theatrics entertaining. You might find it juvenile. All of it is really tongue-in-cheek. We hardly ever have a serious agenda that we're trying to push or try to make people uncomfortable. We're just having fun. We feel so free. We feel so liberated physically and emotionally and intellectually that there aren't really any taboos that we're afraid of.

Are a lot of the sexual lyrics tongue-in-cheek also?

I don't know. It depends on what specific lyrics. There's definitely songs that are more personal to me and they come from a darker place. Those aren't necessarily that fun. But they can help me resolve certain issues. It's always better to talk about something and get it out in the open. It's not always fun but it's therapeutic.

Yeah, Hissing Fauna felt more confessional than the albums that followed it.

That record is out of necessity. I was going through such a difficult time and I was using music as something to help me heal. It's not like I set out to make a really personal, confessional record, I just needed to make that. If that makes sense. It wasn't a premeditated thing, "Well, this record is going to be very confessional." I was going through such a terrible time and I was using music as therapy in a way.

Now that the dust has settled, is looking back on that record and that period harder for you to re-experience? Do you feel the same pain? Are those songs closer to you because they spring from a more personal space rather than a persona?

I like that record. I like playing those songs. It's funny because we have so many songs that we haven't touched live. We haven't played anything from any of the records that came before Satanic Panic in the Attic in forever. I can't remember the last time we played any of those songs. It's kind of weird, like my mind turned around Satanic Panic in the Attic and these last couple of records. We seem almost like a different band. I just feel so disconnected from those other records but I feel really connected to Hissing Fauna, Sunlandic Twins and Satanic Panic in the Attic. I definitely feel really connected to them but some songs are harder to perform night after night. Like "The Past is a Grotesque Animal," we've played that many, many times. But it's not something I'm really feeling right now and don't want to do it. But it's cool to have songs like that. If you are in a certain mood you can exorcize those demons with a song. If all you had was really happy songs, you'd be kind of fucked if you're in a shitty mood (laughs).

"The Past is a Grotesque Animal" has to be hell to play, especially on your voice.

I'm a weird vocalist. I'm really taking chances because I am not trained at all. I have no idea really how to protect my voice or even how to warm up. I have some really rudimentary techniques I use to warm up but a lot of times I don't even warm up. A lot of times I just
take the stage and realize, "Oh shit, I'm not warmed up yet! I can't sing this yet!" Then you just have to work your way through it.

I know that as a fan singing "Past" it wears me out.

Yeah, that song is super wordy. There are songs on Icons, Abstract Thee EP that came out right after Hissing Fauna that we've never played and I can't even listen to them because it still hurts me. It's way too sad still. But I guess there is a form of detachment that happens with songs. It's detaching from the source or inspiration and taking it somewhere else. Then I can deal with it. I've played "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" so many times and it doesn't really hurt me in that way. It just felt good to do it. But with those other songs I would just feel bad (laughs). I don't even want to sing them or think about them.

I'd like to back up for a moment about the longevity of the band and not playing the old stuff. Every time I see Of Montreal I feel like the audience gets younger and younger which is pretty fantastic for a band that has been around for so long. Is it hard to attract new fans without alienating the old ones?

To be honest, I don't think it's that healthy to think about your fans because you could be a fan of one record or one song. It could change. You don't really have to be beholden to some concept of the fan's perception of you or what they want from you. What one specific person wants from you or what a majority of people want from you. I don't think it's healthy for an artist to even consider that. So, I don't really think about that when I'm writing and recording. I'm not really worried about alienating people or pleasing people. I don't really think it would help the process at all. It's very important to me when I'm creating something to not let anybody else into my little bubble. I feel like that makes it impure and takes it out of this place it needs to be for it to happen organically.

So what is it about your music that attracts the 16-year-old? There is a sophistication about it that's different than what is on the radio these days or lack thereof radio.

I'm not sure really. I can't really say. Maybe because it's liberating. Maybe seeing people wearing interesting outfits and dressing up. I think it appeals to the side of people's personality that is in a hibernating state most of the time. Then they get a chance to cut loose because it's like Halloween or a costume party. It's always fun to go to a costume party when Halloween rolls around because everyone gets into it. Pretty much everybody has that side to their personality but most of the time it's in this hibernating state.

Back to the breaking down of song structures - another artist I feel is doing similar things is Sufjan Stevens with his newest record The Age of Adz.

Yeah, I love that record.

Someone was telling me that you do. I do see some similarities between his music and yours. I know that record, like Hissing Fauna, came out of personal strife.

That record has really meant a lot to me. It is probably the record I have connected with the most over the last five years or so. Not only because of its emotional content but also musically I feel like I've never heard music like that before. It's one of the most groundbreaking records we've ever had as humans. It is weird to me that it hasn't gotten more acclaim. I mean, it has gotten a lot of critical acclaim but I saw the records making critics' album of the year lists and I just couldn't believe that record wasn't on top of all the lists. Anybody who really loves music and loves the art form should see that it was the most fantastic, most exceptional record made that year.

I think one of the problems was that people were expecting another Illinois and it's completely different than that.

With artists, all of their records are held up against each other. If that was his first record and there was no other reference of what Sufjan does and what he is capable of it probably would have had a completely different impact on people. I was thinking about a review I read of the new Deerhoof record. I love Deerhoof and I think they're incredibly creative and extremely wonderful and important. I couldn't believe this writer was giving them such a mediocre review. I was thinking about all the other records that were getting good reviews that were so much more derivative and so meaningless. Well, not meaningless but I can't imagine them having any sort of value 10 years from now. It's weird that certain records that are more adventurous, more cutting edge and more valuable....

Not everyone wants to be challenged when they listen to music.

Yeah, that's true.

Have you seen Sufjan play those songs live?

No, I haven't seen him yet but I think we're playing a festival together this summer so hopefully I will get a chance to see it. I can't imagine how he'd do it live.

Speaking of stage shows, the last time I saw Of Montreal, it seemed to be more Kevin Barnes-centric than ever before. The band surrounded you in a horseshoe shape and you had the entire stage to roam around. Will we be seeing less and less of the other band members?

That was just an idea for the last tour because we wanted to do something different from the previous tours where we had a lot of action with the performance artists. We'd done tours before where we had this room where most of the theatrics took place but that was an insanely heavy stage and it broke everyone's backs (laughs). So we decided to make it a little easier on ourselves so we created that horseshoe shape. I wasn't playing guitar on that tour. It was fun for me to be a front man and dancing around and have that sort of persona. On this new tour, it's kind of similar to that but we're getting more people involved with singing songs. We're getting band members involved in different ways. We kind of felt it was weird to have the band so displaced in a way and have them pushed into the shadows. We want to get people more involved this summer.

Is there a line where theatrics can overshadow the music?

I never really felt that because the music doesn't change just because something is happening on the stage. It doesn't get quieter. If people are really trying to focus on the lyrics but they're getting distracted is one thing, but I don't think you could ever have too much going on on stage for me. If I go see a concert 99% of the bands that really have any sort of theatrical elements to their shows, they might have some video stuff but I would never think that. It's obvious if you've seen our shows that we wouldn't think that. I wouldn't feel that way about theatrics. I always loved what George Clinton did. I always loved the theatrical side of Parliament and how they had so many different layers to what they were about. We view ourselves in that vein. We think of ourselves as the grandchildren of Parliament.

On your last tour it seems like you found a great foil for yourself in Janelle Monae.

She's amazing. She has become a really close friend of mine. It's amazing to develop new friendships, especially artistic relationship like that. It's something I treasure and hold very close to my heart.

Did she help you come up with that Michael Jackson tribute at the end of the show?

No, that was our idea. We wanted to come up with something we could all do together. We didn't really think of the tour as Janelle Monae and Of Montreal. We wanted there to be a lot of integration between the two groups. We just wanted to have a lot of cross-pollination. The Michael Jackson thing at the end was a really great way to close the evening together, holding hands.

I also saw you do a Franz Ferdinand cover and a Nirvana cover once to end your show.

It's kind of hard to pick them though. That's the tricky thing. It's always fun. The Nirvana was great. It seemed like the right time and it had been long enough for people to get back into Nirvana. It was around the time of the anniversary of Nevermind. That record meant a lot to me at one point so it was great to do that one again. It's a great song. The most badass rock song ever.

Which cover song ideas have been floated around that will never see the light of day?

We tried a number of things we felt like we couldn't do. It's hard to do a Marvin Gaye song or Al Green. If you don't have that voice, it's going to sound kind of weird. I guess you could always do it. We were listening to the Slits version of "Heard it Through the Grapevine" yesterday and realized how incredible that version is. In a lot of ways, it's just as good as all the other versions out there but it's not Marvin.

Speaking of your voice, I feel like your vocal style has been moving closer and closer to Prince. I know you referenced '70s musicians such as Parliament and Stevie Wonder but has Prince been a direct influence on your songwriting as well?

Yeah, definitely. Without question. I adore him and I adore everything about him. He's an incredible professional.
He's an incredible musician and incredible vocalist and dancer. You couldn't really ask for a better human (laughs). I mean on an artistic level. Especially his earlier records like Sign O' the Times, Parade and basically everything up until Diamond and Pearls is, I think, the most incredible pop writing we have.

I remember reading somewhere they floated doing a Prince and Bob Marley duo at one point. But Bob Marley wouldn't do it because Prince was too effeminate. I should probably Google it to be sure. That would have been pretty interesting.

I guess Stevie Wonder did some stuff with Bob. I was doing some Googling about that. That's awesome but I don't think there is any footage of it. There's a recording of a show Stevie did in Jamaica maybe, and Bob Marley played and they played some songs together. It was pretty amazing. Yeah, Prince and Bob Marley would have been pretty great.

Stevie Wonder is another guy who had an amazing run of albums.

Yeah, it's insane. I was listening to a lot of Stevie Wonder when I was doing False Priest and rediscovering Songs in the Key of Life and Innervisions and Music of My Mind and that whole period. Songs in the Key of Life is one of those records that really inspires you and you really love it but at the same time it can make you feel like, "Why do I even bother?" I'm never going to make anything that great (chuckles).

Is it reasonable to hold yourself to a standard like that?

No, definitely not. That's why I have to be like, "Fine, I'm not Stevie Wonder. I'll never be that great." But I'm not going to not make music because I'm not Stevie Wonder. There is that little voice sometimes that's like, "God, man. I wish I was that good" (laughs). You know, that's all right. I'm sure he probably felt that way about other people too. I'm sure he probably felt that way about James Brown or Otis Redding or whoever. Everyone has that insecurity. Jimi Hendrix didn't like his own voice. Things like that. How could Jimi Hendrix not like his own voice? He sounds great!

You have definitely mined the funkier side of Stevie Wonder but have you ever thought of doing something as heartbreaking like "All In Love Is Fair" or something like that?

Those kind of ballads are actually my least favorite Stevie stuff, even though it's great. I can appreciate it but I don't know. Writing about love like that is kind of tricky. If it really comes from the heart, that's one thing. But so many times people will sit down and write a song and they just write about love because it's the conventional thing to do. But I'm not really that into love ballads at all. They just don't seem that genuine most of the time.

You don't feel like something like "Let's Get It On" isn't genuine?

No, that's genuine, for sure. Sexuality is a real, natural thing. If I thought about it I'm sure there's some love songs that really touch me. I feel like John Lennon's songs for Yoko seem genuine. There has to be a rawness too. If it's just super flowery and sentimental it doesn't really have much impact.

What songs in your lifetime have meant the most to you?

Definitely the first two John Lennon solo records.

Plastic Ono Band and Imagine?

Yeah, Plastic Ono Band plus Imagine. Definitely Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. There is always an emotional impact and potency in those records. All the Beatles records. All the '60s Kinks records, Os Mutantes, Sly and the Family Stone with everything up until Fresh. Curtis Mayfield's first couple solo records. There's just so many.

It's pretty amazing that we get to experience this stuff, isn't it?

Yeah, it's great. I was talking to someone yesterday about as an artist it's kind of incredible that in 2011 that you have Stevie Wonder, Parliament, Prince but you also have Sufjan Stevens and Animal Collective and Caribou and other people like that. There's so much incredible music from earlier times and even world music. Especially now, everything is so accessible. All this incredible stuff from the '60s like Ethiopian funk. You can get your hands on that. Like Cambodian music. It's crazy how much access we have to so much incredible stuff.

How do you find time to listen to music?

I like listening to music when I'm doing little things around the house like cooking or chilling out. I always want to have music on when I'm doing something non-musical. It's not going to be a distraction. A lot of times if I come into the studio before I start work on something, I will listen to something to get into the spirit of it and let that inspire something out of me.

Let's talk about the music industry. I just watched Morgan Spurlock's movie about advertising. The whole conceit of the film is selling out vs. buying in. This is about the Outback thing. I feel like the whole attitude of the country has changed lately. Back when Of Montreal started out, people would have been pissed off about a band jumping from an indie label to a major. Now there is no radio or MTV and people don't care about a Wilco song on a Volkswagen ad or your song on an Outback commercial. Was it hard for you to make that decision? Is that the only way to get your music out?

It's kind of a tricky thing. As an indie artist, everyone is always so broke all the time. They've been broke their whole lives probably. When these big companies come to you with a check for more money than you've ever seen at one time, more money than you'd probably make all year, it's really, really difficult to say no to that. But then there's that dilemma because you know there's going to be a bad backlash. I think it still exists in the community. Not with everybody but there's definitely a punk rock attitude still prevalent in the scene where you don't lip synch or do certain things. There's these unwritten rules as far as maintaining your credibility. If you put a song in a commercial and it's pitching some stupid product and your song gets associated with that stupid product it's kind of terrible because the song has been ruined for people. You just throw trash on the song in a way which is not respectful to your own art. But at the same time, you need that money to keep going and to keep putting out records.

People would say, "Well, R.E.M. wouldn't do that and Radiohead wouldn't do that," but they are not in the same financial position as a lot of indie acts.

Totally. For them, there is no reason to do it because they don't really benefit, necessarily, from having a song in a Volkswagen commercial. It depends who you are. I think what you're saying is true. People aren't as critical as they used to be and it probably wouldn't be death to band. There would probably be a handful of people that would be like, "Fuck that band. They're sell outs, blah blah." You don't really hear "sell out" that much anymore. It doesn't seem like it really comes into the conversation that much anymore.

Right, the attitude has changed.

I'm sure if you're a punk rock band and that was your whole thing , anti-corporation, then you'd lose everything if you did that. For most people, you gain people who are like, "Oh, actually that song was really cool."

What was your experience with it? Did you gain more fans or was there backlash?

I think we had both. Definitely there was major backlash. We had people coming to the shows....There was one show we played in Austin, Texas where these people brought a big Outback Steakhouse banner. They went so far out of their way. They got napkins from Outback Steakhouse and were throwing them in the air (laughs). It was something they had to spend money on actually and that's a lot of time. That was like next level backlash. But we had people still come to the show and stuff. It wasn't like nobody was supporting us anymore.

No one threw a Bloomin' Onion at you?

I think they had a Bloomin' Onion that they wanted to throw but then someone somehow caught it beforehand (laughs).

Would Kevin Barnes circa Cherry Peel feel the same way?

About selling out?

If you got approached with that sum of money.

I think it would be the same situation. It hasn't really changed. During Cherry Peel I had this telemarketing job. All of us had these terrible jobs so I think if I had got offered a way out of that even in spite of losing some credibility in some people's eyes, I don't think I would be able to refuse it. You have to really sacrifice a lot to maintain that level of anti-corporate whatever. You can't really get around it. Everybody shops in the same places. Everybody is supporting these corporations anyway. What difference does it make if you have a song in a commercial or you go there and buy their hamburger? It's the same thing in a way. At least if you sell a song for a commercial, you're getting something out of it. I could see it both ways. I can see how it's potentially damaging
to a song, at least, and to some degree people's perception of you and your commitment to your art. There are other hard realities you have to accept as an adult.

I interviewed one indie artist who said the goal nowadays is not to be rich but not have to work a day job anymore.

That's pretty much it. You just want to be able to make your music. No one is really trying to get yachts and Mercedes Benz. We're just trying to stay afloat and be in a situation where we can focus as much as possible on our art.

Do you self-finance all your own records?

I have a deal with Polyvinyl where we split all the expenses. But I have my own studio where I record. With the exception of False Priest everything I have ever recorded was recorded in my home studio. Studio might give you an exaggerated concept of what it was, especially back in the day. It was basically a 4-track and a $100 mike. Slowly, with each record, it has gotten a little bit better. I have understood how to get better sound, slowly, over time, by just learning little things, little engineering tricks and little mixing tricks. Pretty much everything is done on a shoestring budget or no budget at all.

You seem to have a lot of ideas circling around your work. Where are you headed next?

I started working on a new record. I'm basically done, actually. All of the songs are a lot longer. Much of the songs are about eight minutes long. It's a little bit like I was doing with Skeletal Lamping, having these longer, slightly fragmented songs. These ones are less fragmented. They feel more like one composition and not a bunch of different compositions pieced together. I've incorporated a lot more symphonic instruments. There are a lot of woodwinds and strings and brass. Things I haven't really used in the past very much.

Are you playing these or do you have people coming in?

Yeah, I can't play those instruments. K Ishibashi, who plays in the band now, plays violin and is doing all the string arrangements. He's turned me onto a bunch of his friends that are really talented and also excited about experimental arrangements. Which is important because a lot of people can play an instrument, but they don't have much imagination. They have all these rules in their heads, especially classical musicians. They have all these rules in their heads about what you can do and what you can't do. They are a bit robotic about it. Then you get that great combination of virtuosity and imagination. I feel really fortunate that I've met a couple people that fit that description.

Is there a thematic preoccupation in your new songs?

It's definitely more intimate. It's more personal. It's not really as sexual. There are a couple of funkier moments but I wanted to make something that sounded more intimate just because I was going through some different things as of late. Similar to Hissing Fauna, I was using music as therapy to get over these things and resolve them.

Do these songs have movements and tempo switches like the Sufjan songs?

Each one is different. The Sufjan record definitely feels almost like a through composition. You could listen to the whole thing and think about them as different suites because it definitely feels consistent throughout, which I can't even imagine how he was able to sustain that focus on something, to my ears and to my mind, that seems so complex. To have that complexity sustained throughout the 70 minutes or however long it is, that was something I was extremely inspired by. There is a lot more repetition on his record than there is on my stuff. I don't repeat very many sections. I create these expansive soundtracks. A lot of the songs go into these weird, less lyric-based and more music-based moments. There are definitely moments of heavy lyricism but there's really, really moments of instrumental periods. That's really different for me because I haven't really worked much with instrumental music.

I know Sufjan used a visual artist as his inspiration. Do you use any external stimuli when it comes to writing or does it all come from within?

There are definitely a lot of outside influences, especially musically. I hear something like Stevie Wonder for example or I hear something like "Boogie on Reggae Woman" and I listen to what he's doing on the keys and I think, "I want to do something like that. That's so incredible." So then I'll make something like that. It won't sound like Stevie. Nobody can sound like him, anyway. But often, Parliament and Prince and Sly, all these people influence me greatly.

by David Harris

2011-05-?? - Metromix Harrisburg

Q&A: Of Montreal

Wild frontman Kevin Barnes ponders Prince and another stab at live comedy

By Jessica Jardine

Special to Metromix

It’s a bizarre feeling to realize there are indie rock bands that have been around long enough to already have, in the case of the band Of Montreal, 10 full-length albums under their collective belt. After last year’s well-received “False Priest,” the Athens, Georgia-based band has another EP they’re rolling out, “thecontrollersphere,” full of the typically upbeat, electro indie-pop that has come to define their sound.
But lead singer-songwriter Kevin Barnes—who has earned a reputation as an exuberant showman willing to strip down nude during shows or cover his body in mountains of glitter—fell in love with R&B in recent years and the band’s sound has reflected those newer funk and soul influences. That led to a collaboration with celebrated newcomer Janelle Monae on her critically lauded “The ArchAndroid” album and Beyoncé’s lil’ sis, Solange Knowles, who popped up on “False Priest.”
As the band hits the road for one of their celebrated, wildly visual live tours, Barnes continues to rely on the organic nature of collaboration between his creative team, which includes his brother and wife. And considering previous tours have included a live horse being trotted out on stage, those who’ve seen the art-rockers in action know that it often means expectations are going to be blown away.

What can someone expect for the live show? You guys are known for being incredibly over the top and then, other times, pretty minimalist in terms of production.
It’s something that sort of evolves over the course of the tour. We might start off with a concept or a set of ideas and then, the more shows that we play, the more that we switch it up and change it. We have a bunch of performance artists and a bunch of interesting cartoons for this one, though. My brother is the main one who creates most of the content for the stage theatrics of show. I mean, I talk to him about it but, for the most part, it’s his thing.

“Thecontrollersphere” EP was recorded at the same time as “False Priest.” Do you feel the songs differ much?
It’s a similar feeling but, in the way that all the songs are pretty different on “False Priest,” there are a decent variety of different kinds of songs: slower songs, faster songs, and funkier songs. It’s in that ballpark I guess.

What was the determination for holding off on including those songs on “False Priest”?
They would’ve fit but we really didn’t want to make a double album. So, we had to take some of the songs away. There are even more songs from that period that haven’t been released yet. I think we might even do another EP because it was a really productive time for me.

Is there any particular reason why it was so productive?
I think it was kind of discovering a certain kind of music that I’d always liked but hadn’t worked with, as far as a genre. I was rediscovering funk music and soul music and just really riding that wave of excitement.

In terms of that R&B influence, who are the artists that you love?
Well, my all time favorite vocalist would be Sly Stone. I love all the Family Stone records and all the Marvin Gaye ‘70s records, Curtis Mayfield, Parliament, and Stevie Wonder. There are so many great artists from that time period.

How did you end up connecting with Janelle Monae?
We live in kind of the same area. She lives in Atlanta and we live in Athens. We’d met after a show and just started talking. From there, she was working on the “The ArchAndroid” album and we were working on “False Priests” so I’d send her mixes of stuff I was working on and she and her partners would send me stuff that they were working on. I felt very connected to her throughout the whole process. They were very much a great motivator and inspiration to me. I heard what they were doing and thought it was so fantastic and wanted to do something equally as cool.

You went on a comedy tour a few years back. How did that come about?
Well, it was basically me and my wife and my brother were trying to figure out ways to have fun, earn some money and, basically, get out of town for a period of time. It was a fun experience because it was kind of scary to just set up a tour and have no idea what you’re going to do. Then, once you get to the venue, you just look around and say, “Alright, what’s it going to be tonight?” We put something together and, at first, it was pretty terrible but after about the fourth or fifth show it started to evolve into something a little bit more tolerable and slightly entertaining.

Did the show involve sketches or improv or a combination?
It was sketches that were sort of loose and that we could improv on. We didn’t have long moments with any intense soliloquies or anything. [Laughs] It’s definitely more in the dada realm of comedy.

Having a comedy tour under your belt, can you imagine doing it again?
Possibly. It was a fun experience. It was definitely low profile. I mean, we were playing pretty small places that had, at most, like 50 people. It definitely wasn’t the best way to earn a living. [Laughs] You have to really love it. It’s like anything; like when we first started playing music. You play to 30 people every night and just make enough money to buy gas to go the next city.

I saw that you also released the last album on cassette and that seemed pretty unusual. What went into that decision?
I guess it’s something that’s a bit of a movement. It’s kind of like how for a long time nobody was releasing anything on vinyl and then people started getting excited about vinyl again and now pretty much everybody releases their record on vinyl, especially indie artists. It’s a bit of a novelty because nobody really does it anymore. I think it’s cool and it’s just a different format and you can have a different relationship with this other physical object.

There was an article where Pitchfork called you the psychedelic Prince—as in, Prince the artist. What do you think of such a nice moniker?
Yeah, it’s nice but he’s kind of a psychedelic Prince himself. I don’t know if there’s room in this world for two. [Laughs]

2011-05-06 - the AV Club

Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes' top 3 rock alter egos

Kevin Barnes talks rock’s rich tradition of onstage personas

Kevin Barnes knows a thing or two about adopting new personas

by Matt Schild May 6, 2011

If you were going to come up with an alter ego for yourself, you’d probably choose to don a cowl and strike back at the underworld or to be a glamorous debutante. Not Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes: His Georgie Fruit alter ego, who dominated the act’s Skeletal Lamping tours, is a cross-dressing African-American who’s undergone multiple sex change operations. Barnes obviously has a significantly richer vision for his secondary personality than you do. He also has a rich appreciation for rock musicians’ tradition of crafting onstage personas. Prior to Of Montreal’s recent appearance at the Bluebird Theater, Barnes reflected on a trio of his favorite rock ’n’ roll alter egos.

Prince’s Camille
Kevin Barnes: As a kid, I discovered [Prince], and it opened up a lot of doors for me, intellectually and emotionally and sexually. I didn’t really know about Camille until later in life. I just knew that there was this wild man out there who was taking all these crazy chances, doing things that no one’s ever done before, or doing it in a way that no one’s ever done before. The thing I most love about Camille, for Prince, it kind of gave him the opportunity to say things he wouldn’t feel comfortable saying just as Prince. That’s something, as a songwriter, I can identify with having.

The A.V. Club: Isn’t that one of the primary reasons why people adopt alter egos?

KB: I think so. It’s just a little trick of the mind. Somehow, you can pretend it’s not as connected to your psyche. In reality, you can’t really defy yourself in that way; everything’s from inside you. It’s just a nice trick you can utilize to get a little bit deeper and pull things out of you that maybe you’d be too self-conscious to do as yourself.

David Bowie’s Thin White Duke
KB: I’m more frightened by the Thin White Duke than I am by Aladdin Sane or Ziggy [Stardust]. He’s a little bit frightening because he has a little bit of a Third Reich influence, which is clearly extremely fucked up. The music that he did in that time period, whatever you call them, The Berlin Trilogy of records, are so amazing. They’re not really commercial successes, but they’re incredible artistic successes. You have someone like Bowie, who had complete commercial success and was a rock star, one of the most famous faces on the planet. For him to go in a completely other direction on those albums is really inspiring for me, as an artist, to know that someone like that can take chances and it’s not going to kill his career to do it. I think it adds a lot of credibility to his oeuvre.

David Byrne
KB: I think there’s probably some disconnect between his actual personality and his stage persona. It doesn’t feel like acting at all. At some level, the alter egos of Bowie and Prince maybe have trace elements of that sort of character acting. It’s not extremely genuine in the way like somebody like Neil Young or John Lennon are.

AVC: Don’t many performers have disconnects between their real-life identities and their stage presences?

KB: For us, it helps a lot. I noticed that depending upon what I was wearing, it kind of brings out a different part of my personality onstage. If I were to take the stage just in jeans and a T-shirt, I think I would be a bit more self-conscious. It’s kind of funny. Dressing up makes me less self-conscious. I just get into the spirit of it, and I get swept away by it. I get transported outside of myself, or transported to some good part of myself that’s not totally neurotic and pessimistic.

I did create a stage persona, Georgie Fruit. I was sort of Georgie Fruit in my head when I would take the stage a couple years ago. As of late, I integrated that into my self-concept. I don’t make a distinction between who I am, Kevin Barnes, or Georgie Fruit, or whatever persona I might have created. It’s all just naturally flowing through me.

2002-10-17 - Broward Palm Beach New Times

Wayward Son

Is Of Montreal leader Kevin Barnes happy to revisit South Florida? Not exactly.

By Jeff Stratton Thursday, Oct 17 2002

Kevin Barnes isn't from Montreal, nor is he from the Florida subtropics, although he did move from Michigan to Palm Beach Gardens at age 15. But he left when he was 21 and never even glanced back.

Details
9 p.m. Saturday, October 19. Call 561-832-0706.
Respectable Street Cafe, 518 Clematis St., West Palm Beach


"I don't look fondly on those years. I blocked them out of my memory," says the acclaimed psychedelic poptician from his home in -- where else? -- Athens, Georgia. "I didn't like living in Florida. I never really met anyone else who was on the same wavelength I was on. It was always a struggle to try to make things better, but eventually I just gave up and moved. I'm definitely much happier in Athens than I was down there in West Palm."

That comes as no surprise, since Athens is where Barnes found his current bandmates and fell into the same circles as Jeff Mangum (of Neutral Milk Hotel) and Will Cullen and Bill Doss (Olivia Tremor Control), even becoming their housemate. "It was a little strange," Barnes says about shacking up with the noted Elephant 6 affiliates. "We already felt like a little brother to Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel and Apples in Stereo. Those were the three godheads, and we were kind of underneath them."

Barnes, 28, probably doesn't see it that way anymore. Of Montreal has taken the same totems sacred to the psychedelic pop crowd -- Sgt. Pepper, Pet Sounds -- and elevated them to outrageously ambitious heights. Each Of Montreal album has been a novella jacketed with a distinct personality, with the new Aldhils Arboretumexploring the sensation of disconnect from one's own community set to colorful little romps ("A Question for Emily Foreman," "Pancakes for One") and fun, hurried pop gems ("Natalie and Effie in the Park," "Predictably Sulking Sara") popped out of a pocket, displayed, and hidden again. The slightly '60s arrangements are weighted with toots and honks and a tambourine's silly shake. An oboe doesn't even sound out of place as lead instrument by the time you've traveled all the way to the arborescent "Kissing in the Grass."

Beyond the obvious influences, Barnes cites early King Crimson, South American crazies Os Mutantes, Kevin Ayers, Robert Wyatt, and Philip Glass. Certainly a far cry from his first musical aspirations, attempted while at Cardinal Newman High School in West Palm Beach, where he began the seeds of a band called Soulcraft (!), known for Metallica, Fugazi, and Jane's Addiction covers. Barnes was the singer. "I had this Jim Morrison complex," he groans. "I thought I was a poet. It was very, very embarrassing. I don't know if anyone has any film documentation, but if they do, I hope they burn it. Those were awkward years. I was very impressionable."

Actually, videotape does exist of the acoustic-oriented songs Barnes was writing and performing just before he headed north in 1994. At the Wormhole, a small record store in downtown West Palm Beach, Barnes introduced some of his first compositions [see "The Caucasian Rock Circle," December 13, 2001]. At Soundsplash, another local CD store, he located copies of two current touchstones -- the Kinks' Village Green Preservation Society ("that changed my life forever") and Brian Wilson's long-lost Smile.

Luckily for Barnes, by the time he'd left Florida, he was recording four-tracks in his bedroom (sound familiar?), sending one to the Bar/None label, which snatched Barnes for a three-album deal. He called his first project Trucker's Wife and spent the next few years traveling around the Midwest. During a trip to Montreal, he suffered and subsequently became utterly consumed by a horrific heartbreak, the echoes of which still color his work and gave his band its name. Of Montreal's first record, 1997's Cherry Peel, introduced Barnes' lo-fi, confessional navel-gazing. "Rather than focusing on the negative or even becoming active and changing reality, we were just becoming more introverted, trying to change our reality that way," Barnes explains. The next year's follow-up, The Bedside Drama: A Petite Tragedy, was a virtual role-play of Barnes' Canadian heart-shatter. The songs were barren and painfully personal but as melodically complex as Cole Porter classics. Therapeutic, no doubt, for Barnes but still bidding a warm welcome to the rest of the world, the mini-symphonies of Bedside Dramasolidified Of Montreal's capable charms.

By 1999's The Gay Parade, Of Montreal began creating strange lands with weird characters. Staring at traffic one day, Barnes rearranged the images in his mind into a sort of abstract parade, each passing vehicle becoming a float and each float symbolizing a brightly colored song. The next year, the band released Horse and Elephant Eatery (No Elephants Allowed): The Singles and Songles Album, capturing stray fairy-tale fragments sans the expected thematic thread but still remaining innocently engaging.

Almost too grand to be believed (and certainly a lot to absorb all at once), 2001's honestly subtitled Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse explodes with untethered creativity. The concept and story line are impossibly intricate, as evinced by titles like "The Events Leading Up to the Collapse of Detective Dullight" and "The Hopeless Opus or the Battle of the Unfriendly Ridiculous." The accompanying booklet features bizarre anthropomorphic cartoon characters like the kind Robyn Hitchcock is known for, but rendered in the style of National Lampoon's M.K. Brown. The results -- festooned with theremin, horns, marimba, even kazoo, earned Coquelicot comparisons to Syd Barrett on Sesame Street.

"It feels dismissive when people say 'very childlike,' because it has this connotation of being frivolous," Barnes complains. "I never want to make something pretentious and too serious. I'm into surrealism and dadaism and absurdism, and the fundamental elements of those movements was a playfulness and a libertine attitude."

Barnes doubts he would have ever found the inspiration for this lysergic imagery if he'd stayed in the land of Jimmy Buffett cover bands. "Everybody in Palm Beach Gardens was into surfing and, oddly enough, country music.

"I really don't feel like Florida is my home -- it's just where my parents happen to live," continues Barnes, who plans to keep his visit low-key. "I'll probably bum around the house, go to the beach, and pray to God I don't see anybody from high school."

2010-06-17 - Pitchfork

original article.

Thursday, June 17 : Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes Talks New Album, Tour With Janelle Monáe

"I've always had a suspicion of the Catholic Church, even as a kid."

False Priest, the new album from Athens glam-funk freaks of Montreal, is coming this fall. Frontman Kevin Barnes recorded much of it in Los Angeles, working with the producer and composer Jon Brion (Fiona Apple, Kanye West). The album will feature collaborations with like-minded R&B sirens Solange Knowles and Janelle Monáe. And according to Barnes, it'll also feature a ton of trunk-rattling bass, a first for an of Montreal album.

We recently caught up with Barnes as he was finishing work on the album. We talked about the Catholic Church, what False Priest will tell you about your car stereo, and the touring extravaganza of Montreal is planning with Janelle Monáe.

Pitchfork: The new album is called False Priest. What does the title mean?

Kevin Barnes: It's open to interpretation. At first-- just as with most things I do-- I didn't really think it had a meaning. But the meaning I've grown to attach to it is sort of a sense of a false policing of yourself, or your psyche-- creating false limitations for yourself, as if there was a false priest inside of all of us that controls us.

Pitchfork: Do you mean inhibitions?

KB: On some level. But inhibitions can stem from so many different sources. We all have our sense of right or wrong, or acceptable or unacceptable thinking or behavior. Especially for me, growing up Catholic, the word priest has more significance than it would for someone who didn't go through that. I've always had a suspicion of the Catholic Church, even as a kid. My brother [artist David Barnes] and I, in our theatrical performances, address that a lot as well: the hypocrisy and the negative aspects of the Church.

Pitchfork: A lot of artists who grew up Catholic and are conflicted about it seem to end up creating work informed by their experiences with the Church.

KB: Yeah, I guess there's something to it. A lot of people take a lot from it. It gives them a sense of balance. It gives them a sense of control, as if they don't feel like there's total chaos. It gives their life meaning on some level. But it never really worked for me. My two sisters go to Church every Sunday. My parents go to Church every Sunday still. It's just my brother and I, for some reason, who didn't connect with it.

Pitchfork: How much did you work with Jon Brion on this one? Did he produce the whole album?

KB: No, he didn't produce it. Basically, I made a record in my home studio. By of Montreal standards, by the previous records' standards, I made a record; it was basically done. And then I came out to L.A., to Ocean Way studios with Jon. He basically showed me how I could make it sound a lot better, improve the fidelity, get more low end, expand the audio spectrum. And so we cut live drums on top of my programmed drumming, and we recut all the bass guitars and added a whole bunch of synthesizers. I basically came to Jon with a finished record, and we improved upon it.

Pitchfork: Is this the first time you've done a really high-fi recording?

KB: It's not even really that hi-fi. It's definitely more hi-fi than anything I've ever done. If I were to have done the whole thing with Jon, then that would have been a different story. But just from my own limitations as a non-engineer-- basically just working by myself and not really concerning myself too much about fidelity-- it's just about getting the ideas out, not worrying about mic placement or EQ or compression or anything like that. It's more about writing all the compositional elements and then dealing with whatever fidelity it has after the fact. But we've definitely accomplished a lot since I've been out here, improving the sound of it.

Pitchfork: What genres did you play around with on this album? And did the improved sound inform the music?

KB: There's a thick R&B influence, so it's cool that we have a lot of deep low end. Basically, every song has a lot more low-end information than I've ever used before. We're trying to make a record that has similar low end to records like The Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest and even, to some degree, stuff like Dr. Dre. That was the goal: To make something that had that low end but also was my thing, an of Montreal record. So it's different. Most indie-pop records don't have that low end.

Pitchfork: So will this be trunk music, then?

KB: That was definitely the thinking: People all of a sudden realize what kind of car stereos they have. It's one of those things where if you listen to it on your laptop, you're not going to hear it, but if you listen to it in the club, then you're really going to hear it; you're really going to feel it. Most cars have pretty decent sound systems nowadays, so you'd hear it there, too. That's the funny thing about when you're mixing, trying to make it sound good in every situation. But there's certain limitations, especially with laptop speakers or something coming out of your iPhone; that's not going to sound that great.

Pitchfork: Are you hoping this one gets some action in the club?

KB: Yeah! I mean there's definitely a lot of candidates there. There's a lot of very dancey, very funky songs. Jon and I were talking about what we really love about music: The physical connection that you can have, besides an intellectual connection. If the music can go through you, and not just make you want to dance, but give you a physical charge as well.

Pitchfork: Jon Brion co-produced Kanye West's Late Registration. There's not too much club music on there, but it's a really widescreen experience. Are you going for something similarly huge like that?

KB: Yeah. That was the thing when we were adding instruments out here and looking at what I had done already, trying to bring that out even more. The thing I really love about music is an unpredictability; that's essential for me. If I'm going to appreciate or connect with something, it can't be predictable. So we try to have these "holy fuck" moments where you're really having your mind blown, especially if you're listening to it on headphones. There's a lot of different records where I'm like, "Oh my god! That's so cool! I can't believe they did that!"

Pitchfork: What are some of your favorite examples of records that do that?

KB: Probably the biggest and most obvious example is the Beatles' "A Day in the Life", when those strings are ascending up and it's getting all chaotic and crazy, and then there's the big ending. That was the first moment when I realized the power of music. That song is so brilliant on so many levels, and in addition to that, there's that moment that just makes you go, "Oh my god!" When it's over, you're breathless.

Pitchfork: You've been doing of Montreal for so long and for so much of the time it's basically been a home-recording project. Is it a big adjustment to come out to L.A. and work the way you've been working on this one?

KB: Yeah. I can't imagine that I would have been able to do it with anyone else, but somehow I just felt so relaxed with Jon. I just really love hanging out with him, even if we're not working. A lot of the time, we're just hanging out, talking and trading stories. We talk about music and playing songs together; he's amazing in that way. He has this head full of songs. He remembers everything and can figure it out instantly. So we spent a lot of time sitting on the piano. We'd talk about some Marvin Gaye song, and he'd be like, "Oh yeah! It's like this! And then this chord changes; it's so beautiful!" We were falling down over these things. We both just love music so much, and we're just so excited about the creative process. He's an exceptional human, and I can't imagine that I would have had as wonderful of an experience with anyone else.

Pitchfork: You've got Janelle Monáe and Solange on this album, and they're both fans of your band. Is it a charge for you to reach across these aisles and connect with people who work in genres that are so far outside where you've been situated?

KB: It's funny. I listen to so much soul music and R&B music. I never really felt like we were a part of any genre. I know that other people would group us in with certain other bands or whatever, but in my heart I didn't really belong there. So it wasn't really strange at all for me, at least, to think of myself on the same wavelength with [Monáe's collective] the Wondaland Arts Society and with Solange. But it was definitely exciting. It's always exciting when you meet someone that is insanely gifted, who you respect so much. And if you get the sense that they respect you too, that's the greatest feeling.

Pitchfork: What are Janelle and Solange like to work with?

KB: Fantastic. I mean, they're my good friends, so we just have fun together. I wrote a song on Janelle's record, and we sang it together. I'm super-close friends with everybody at the Wondaland Arts Society, and we trade songs back and forth all of the time; they're like my best friends. And Solange is fantastic. Her son and my daughter are best buddies, and I think we're going to have an arranged marriage for the two of them.

Pitchfork: The song that you've got on the Janelle Monáe album is really interesting; it's basically an of Montreal song with her singing on it, rather than with you guys playing on her song. It's interesting how it fits into the fabric of that album, and also how it stands out from it. Whose idea was it to put your song on her album?

KB: I guess it just happened organically. I can't really remember a conversation or anything. I think I was just sending them songs. After I met Janelle and [collaborators] Chuck Lightning and Nate Wonder and everybody from the Wondaland Arts Society, it was almost like this romance began. I still feel that excitement. Like, we're in the honeymoon period. It was just super exciting to know each other and to collaborate together, so I can't even really remember how it came about. It just happened organically and now it's there. I haven't really thought about it.

Pitchfork: It's cool how it comes up like that. I like how that album is just left turn after left turn.

KB: For me, it's the album of the last five or 10 years. It's fantastic because it's not just one thing. Like you said, it's constantly changing, and it's almost a through-composition. You never really know where one song is ending and another song is starting. And there's so much cool stuff happening on every fadeout of every song as well. You're like, "Where's that going? That thing was so great! I wish they would have developed it more, but oh, another amazing thing is just popping up!" I can't say enough good things about that record.

Pitchfork: When you're putting music together for a record, do you think about how it's going to come off onstage, with all the theatrics of your live show? Do you develop ideas for the show as you're working on the music?

KB: No, the live show usually comes after the fact. Usually, I write without thinking too much about how we're going to pull it off, just sort of getting excited about what's inspiring me at the moment. We just did this two-week tour, and basically every night on that tour, we would all have a meeting and talk about different ideas that we want to try out for the False Priest tour. We were really excited about production and getting that in motion. Right now, I'm still in L.A. mixing stuff, but my brother and Davey [Pierce] and everybody in the band is back in Athens, building props and creating costumes and thinking up ideas. So we're super excited.

The initial tour that we do to support a record, we'll invest a lot of money and a lot of time and energy and try to make it this giant production. We don't necessarily make money on those tours, but that's not the point. The point is just to be involved in something artistically satisfying and exciting. So this initial False Priest tour we're doing with Janelle Monae. It's going to be the most exciting event that I've ever been a part of. I just know it because we've got so many exciting ideas. We're going to marry the two shows together, in a way. It doesn't feel like you go see a band, and there's a pause, and there's another pause, and then it's over. We want to control the environment from right when the doors open, and have performance art and video performances and so many different levels of artistic stimulation that would go on throughout the whole night, so there's never a moment where there's house music or boring lighting. We want to transform the venues each night, so it becomes this exceptional experience for everyone.

Posted by Tom Breihan on June 17, 2010 at 8 a.m.

2010-06-10 - Spin

original article.

News - By William Goodman on June 10, 2010 11:08 AM


On Athens, GA, psychedelic glam-rock band Of Montreal's upcoming 10th album, False Priest (out this fall), weird has never sounded so good.

For the first time in their 14-year career, Kevin Barnes and Co. ditched the budget home studios they used to record much of their catalogue, and hit Los Angeles' high-tech Ocean Way Recording, where the Beach Boys, Frank Sinatra, Radiohead, and the Rolling Stones have made albums. Barnes tells SPIN.com that the band hired offbeat L.A. superproducer Jon Brion (Kanye West, Spoon) to help create their most hi-fi album yet, while continuing to push their genre-smudging, experimental sound.

Below, Barnes talks about working with Solange Knowles and Janelle Monae, rekindling his side-project with Andrew VanWyngarden of MGMT, Blikk Fang, and the newest addition to Of Montreal's eclectic sound: "trunk-rattling booty bass."

Hey Kevin! How's Los Angeles treating ya?
It's good. But I'm living the vampire lifestyle since I'm working at night. I could be anywhere and it would be the same.

What's the status of the new Of Montreal album?
We're totally done tracking and about halfway finished mixing. We're still ironing it out, but it looks like 14 to 16 songs will make the album.

You wrote some of the new songs while drunk. How'd that go?
Some terrible and funny songs came out of it but I'd just send those to my brother. But a lot of the vocals -- because it's just me being by myself, drunk, at like 4 A.M. -- turned out well. I didn't have any inhibitions. It's important for me to block out the world and to get into this insular form of life where I'm just in touch with whatever is inspiring me. It helped to bend my mind a little bit. I usually don't drink in the winter but in the summer, I drink a bit more. The crickets were going insane outside, and I was inside the studio going insane. It was a very solitary experience but I felt like I was connecting somehow, in a different way, in a different form.

What can fans expect from the sound of False Priest?
The fidelity is going to be more massive than anything I've ever done before. We're getting inspired by A Tribe Called Quest and Dr. Dre albums, and incorporating that really deep low end into the Of Montreal sound. That's something that's never been before. There's a lot of trunk rattling bass. I'm really into OutKast and booty bass like 2livecrew and Ghetto Boys, plus N.W.A., Beastie Boys, Run D.M.C. I had all those in my head somewhere. I also really love 1960s and '70s reggae, which has really great low ends. It's amazing the way it connects with your body; it's such a physical thing -- it goes right through your body in a way that the other frequencies don't. The album isn't a straight up homage bass music, it's a blend of '70s soul, too. I was trying to think like, "If Philip K. Dick was like a black soul singer in the '70s, what kind of songs would he write?" Or, "If William S. Burroughs was a black songwriter from the '70s what kind of song would he write?" Others are a mix, like if the Kinks were to collaborate with Sly Stone, and Isaac Hayes was the producer and Brian Wilson was involved, too.

Tell me about a few songs specifically.
There's one called "Godly Intersex" and another called "Famine Affair." They're abstract lyrically. I'm thinking of William S. Burroughs a lot. I've only read Queer and Junky but somehow I feel like I've connected to what was inspiring him. It's very free form and I want the character that I invented, Georgie Fruit, to have balance with a slightly more intellectual influence. There needs to be duality.

Beyonce's sister Solange appears on the new album. How did that come together?
When I wrote a new song called "Sex Karma," I thought it would be cool if it appeared on her record. I sent it to her and for a while that was the plan. But I really liked it and changed my mind, and we decided to record it as a duet. Which works because the lyric "You look like a playground to me, player," is funny for a guy to sing. I didn't know if I could pull that off.

There are reports of a collaboration between you and Beyonce. What's up with that?
Nothing yet. If I wrote a song that fits for her and she was into it, I definitely would be happy. But nothing is in the works.

Atlanta R&B starlet Janelle Monae is making on appearance on False Priest.
Yep. The track is called "The Enemy Gene." It has sci-fi elements. I've been reading a lot of Philip K. Dick and thinking about the future -- people have a dark vision of it. The track is about technology robbing us of our organic connection to nature. It has a complex, semi-abstract story. Meeting Janelle and her Wondaland Arts Society crew is one of the greatest things to happen in the past year. There's a weird disconnect between Athens and Atlanta. I didn't really know any Atlanta musicians, but in the last few years I met Bradford Cox from Deerhunter and the Wondaland Arts Society, and it's a beautiful artistic romance. They'll send me mixes of songs, and vice versa. They've been a huge influence and inspiration on me. We'll definitely work together a lot more in the future. There are a lot of ideas in the works and those will probably be something we focus on a lot over the next year.

How did you end up working with producer Jon Brion?
A friend of his turned him on to our music and soon he mentioned Of Montreal in an interview, so I got in touch. We hit it off right away. He had this vision: "Man, I could definitely help you, I can see what your doing. If we worked together we could create something really cool." So, I tracked the album one instrument at a time in my home studio in Athens. Then I came out to L.A. and played it for Jon, and we tried to figure out how to improve the fidelity and decided which instruments we could add. We re-tracked bass guitars, electric guitars, and some pianos at Ocean Way. Jon really helped -- it benefits me to have someone around with an engineer's mind as well as a producer's mind because there's a lot that I overlook when I'm recording and experimenting with compositional techniques.

Last year Susan Sarandon joined Of Montreal onstage in New York and spanked members of the band with a ruler. That was random.
We have a mutual friend and her son is an Of Montreal fan. He turned her on to us. She's been in Rocky Horror Picture Show and tons of cool movies, so we figured she'd be up for doing something weird. We invited a skit based around her as a teacher that sees these two pigs misbehaving, grabs one pig by the ear, bends it over her knee, and spanks it. It's really interesting to realize that this famous actress is just like you -- creative, artistic, excited about off the wall things. We might do some more collaborations onstage.

Any plans to revive Blikk Fang, your side-project with Andrew VanWyngarden of MGMT?
We've been talking about it, but timing is tough: they just released their record and I'm recording frantically. It's just a matter of finding time. We both really want to make it happen. Even if the songs never get released, it's fun to work with someone that you respect a lot and have a lot in common with. We've already written a bunch of unrelased songs together and hope to develop those more.

2010-07-21 - Michigan Live

original article.

Full Q&A with Of Montreal frontman Kevin Barnes on upcoming album, performance at Land of Nod Experiment

Of Montreal in Jackson? Believe it. The indie rock band is headlining the final day of the Land of Nod Experiment on Sunday in Leoni Township. The music festival is one of four dates on an initial push to start promoting "False Priest," the Georgia band's 10th album and Of Montreal mastermind Kevin Barnes' latest exploration of freak-out dance pop. Here is what Barnes had to say about the gig, the album's bass-bumping sound and his collaborations with up-and-coming R&B singer Janelle Monáe, who will join the band on tour in September and asked Of Montreal to contribute to her debut, "The ArchAndroid":

Is this show going to be the first opportunity for fans to hear some of the new material from “False Priest” that you haven’t had a chance to perform before?
Yeah, we’re debuting four new ones at Land of Nod.

I’ve only heard “Coquet Coquette” and some samples of other songs, but it sounds like your aim with this one is to help people get their groove on.
It’s definitely a very funky, dance-oriented record, but there are some kind of stranger, art-pop moments that happen later on in the record.

It’s not just mindless booty shaking, though. As far as the lyrics go, there are some literary, intellectual influences?
A goal of mine is to make something that can touch you on multiple levels, something that’s not just a dance song about dancing or a dance song about love. So I try to have an element of ... I don’t know really what you call it, but I put some time into the lyrics so it’s not just one-dimensional.

You’ve always had prominent bass lines, but it sounds like bass is taking an even bigger role on this one.
It’s not so much about the bass guitar as the subfrequencies. I went out to L.A. and worked with Jon Brion. We worked in the Ocean Way Recording studio, and we added some things like low synth bass and some 808, some things to really create a broad spectrum so it becomes almost panoramic in a way.

Was that the reason you decided to bring Brion on board, so he could add that panoramic sound?
That’s kind of his vision. You know, I always work at home by myself and I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m flying by my pants, kind of, just trying to be creative. I’m not really thinking about how it’s going to translate into speakers. I sent him some of those early mixes and he thought he could improve upon the general sound of the record. ... I trusted him because he has such a great track record.

Is there a continuation of the more experimental song-snippets we heard on “Skeletal Lamping,” or is it a return to a more standard pop-song format?
It’s definitely more pop-song format than “Skeletal Lamping,” but I think just because of the way my brain works ... I get bored so easily, I’m always trying to do something unpredictable, so it’s not totally straightforward. There was an aim to make something that had an immediacy to it. In a way, if you make it too segmented, you can’t really get into a groove because it’s changing tempos so often or song styles. There’s nothing to shake to.

Of Montreal’s sound has expanded so much over the last few albums. Has anything in particular been a catalyst that’s allowed for all this musical exploration?
I think the big thing for me was a couple years ago just getting excited about R&B and soul music from the ’70s. I’ve always had an interest in the genre, but I’d never really incorporated it into my sound. It became sort of an obsession of mine. It’s definitely sort of pushed me in this direction and inspired me the last couple years.

Was there anything that spurred that interest in soul and funk?
Just seeing how much I had in common with people like George Clinton and Sly Stone and Stevie Wonder, the magic of those recordings. There’s something so magical about it, and it made me want to try my hand at creating something like that. When I was making my early records, I was obsessed with The Beatles and The Kinks and The Who. I would listen to that all the time. More recently, the last couple of years, it’s been Prince and Sly Stone and Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield.

The press photo I got has like 37 people in it. How many people are actually going to be performing on stage?
At Land of Nod we’ll have a seven-piece (band). ... The reason we have so many people on the photo is we really want to emphasize that it’s not just a band, it’s more of a performance group. ... There’s so many people involved in performance art or video or sound or in the band.

Can you give any hints, even cryptic ones, about what we can expect costume-wise?
We definitely have some tricks up our sleeve, and we’re going to possibly involve some of the other, more theatrical performers that also have performances at the festival. We haven’t actually formally mapped it all out, but it will hopefully work and hopefully be interesting.

What do you enjoy about these festival gigs?
You can see a lot of bands and performances you wouldn’t see. You get to meet interesting people that you wouldn’t have the chance to meet. It’s always great to play outdoors rather than inside some stale, smoky venue, even if it’s a really nice theater. Most of the time we don’t play nice theaters. They’re cool places, but they’re not the kind of places you would want to spend time in if you weren’t performing. It’s always nice to get into nature.

As truly exciting as it is to have you guys here, you couldn’t convince Janelle Monáe to join you early so we’d get a chance to hear her, too?
I think she’s wrapped up in her own stuff.

You came to work with her just through connections with her Wondaland Art Society?
Basically, we kind of found out about each other and found out how much we had in common. Both our groups are so geared toward doing something exceptional, something ambitious. It was like birds of a feather in a way. It’s great because it’s definitely evolved in this way I couldn’t have predicted or imagined, as far as cross-pollination between the two worlds and all the collaborations that have happened and plans for collaborations. It’s the greatest thing artistically that’s ever happened to me.

2009-08-21 - Under The Radar

of Montreal: In the Studio

“We’re kind of making this psychedelic, No Wave, funk album.”

Aug 21, 2009 Web Exclusive By Mark Redfern

Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes is currently in his Athens, Georgia, home studio working on the band's tenth album, which will be titled False Priest and is tentatively due out next spring. We briefly spoke to Barnes this past Wednesday about his progress on False Priest, which he says is influenced by Parliament and the '80s No Wave scene. "We're kind of making this psychedelic, No Wave, funk album," says Barnes.

So what are you guys working on right now? Are you working on the new record already?
Kevin Barnes: Yeah actually, I'm working on a new record it's gonna be called False Priest. Right now, I'm just kinda like fooling around, just making songs and experimenting. And I'm not so much thinking about what songs are going to be on there or what I'm going to do with the songs. I'm just going to be really free and not think about the outside world at all. I think that's the best way to make music—if you're not thinking about anything other than just being absorbed by the creative process. So that's what I'm trying to do now is just listening to a lot of music and making a lot of music and just kind of immersing myself. I have enough songs now for one album, but I want to just keep writing, see if there's anything else pops up. And then we'll probably release it in the spring of next year.

You said you're listening to a lot of music. What kind of stuff are you listening to that's informing what you're doing?
I've been listening to a lot of Parliament. I've got like The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein and of course Mothership Connection and there's this crazy one called Funkentelechy vs. The Placebo Syndrome. I love it because it's so playful. And it's so funky and groovy. But I just watched this documentary of them and I couldn't believe that we weren't really necessarily influenced by them directly, because we have so much in common. Like the stage show is just so crazy, and there's just so many people on stage, and wild costumes. And you know, so far beyond what everybody else was doing—especially as a black artist. I guess you have Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix and people like that, but at that time [Parliament] were like the biggest freaks in the world! The best band in the world! I think, when I'm watching this, I'm like, 'man if I was alive back then, I'd just would've been like a Deadhead for them, just following them everywhere because I just connect with it so much'—it's just so free and crazy and so awesome. There's a lot of Parliament that I'm listening to, and Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder—a lot of soul stuff and funk stuff. Then I've got a couple of No Wave compilations from the New York, early '80s, No Wave scene. Like Teenage Jesus & the Jerks and people like that. I'm getting into that. So we're kind of making this psychedelic, No Wave, funk album.

Cool! You should get George Clinton to come down and sing guest vocals or something.
Man. I'd be extremely intimidated, first of all. Because he's like the real deal. Seriously just out there, kinda like in a Sun Ra sort of way. Probably not as far as Sun Ra. I'd be like, 'man, sitting next to George.' Just even being on the same block as him would be just amazing.

I saw him at the airport recently.
Are you serious?

Yeah, he was at the baggage claim area at the same time I was.
Oh my god, that is so funny!

He was in a wheelchair and he had some woman like, wheeling him around.
He was in a wheelchair?

Yeah, he probably couldn't be bothered to walk. He's George Clinton man; he doesn't have to walk if he doesn't want to.
Yeah, it's easier to sit in the chair. How old is he?

I don't know, he's probably in his 60s or 70s at this point [Editor Note: He's 68]. I'm not sure. Maybe he has a reason to be in a wheelchair, but I got the sense that he just wanted to be pushed around by a lady.
Awesome.

But I don't know for sure.... Well, is there anything else you can tell me about what you're working on? You think it's going to come out next spring?
Yeah.

It sounds like it's going to be funkier than your last record? Is that the plan?
Well, our last record was extremely schizophrenic. I was trying to piece together the different compositions to create something very unpredictable. It was still had sort of funky, dancy elements, so it's not like this new thing I'm doing is completely new for me, it's just this weird evolution, sort of freaky evolution that is just sort of happening and I'm just letting it happen. So it's not going to be a total departure from Skeletal Lamping or Hissing Fauna, but it's definitely different, it has a different quality to it. But it's really difficult for me—I'm sure for you too or anybody—to describe music with words. It's kind of visceral.

2008-11-13 - Paste (part 4)

Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes: The complete Paste interview

Steve LaBate, photo by Jeremy Cowart By on November 13, 2008 4:10 PM |

Paste: On the song “St. Exquisite’s Confessions” on the new record, when you say you’re “tired of sucking the dick of this cruel, cruel city,” are you talking about any city in particular or is it more of an imagined, kind of made-up situation?
Barnes: That’s kind of about Oslo. I have this really special relationship with Oslo because my wife’s from Norway and my daughter was born in Norway, and I spent a lot of time there, and I set up a little studio there and started recording that song there. And you know, it’s weird when you’re in a foreign country. Even though most people speak English there, it’s their second language, so you automatically feel like an outsider. And I’ve had really weird anxiety attacks and bad mental episodes in Oslo, but I’ve also had like some really great experiences. It’s a beautiful city and Norway is a beautiful country, but there’s a darkness there. There’s a real heavy darkness. There’s a lot of super-depressed people. When you have really strong experiences, they stick with you—they’re imprinted on your mind all the time. You walk down a street where you’ve had a weird experience and it kind of happens again; it’s like it never stops happening. So I wrote that song, in a way it’s that feeling of—when you feel beaten by your environment, and you’re trying to push on. Curtis Mayfield

sings about that a lot, like when you’re beaten down by your surroundings and your experiences, but you gotta keep on pushing and staying positive. I actually changed the original lyric [to “St. Exquisite’s Confessions”]. It used to be, “I was so used to sucking dick while I was in prison.” I thought that was funny—I liked the idea of this character: It would be like, “I got so used to sucking dick while I was in prison, I’ve forgotten what it’s like to please a woman, or what it takes to please a woman.” It’s kind of a funny idea, like if you’ve been in prison and you have to adapt to that world—you know, just suck some dick or whatever. It could be metaphorically speaking or actually sucking dick. Ad now you’re in the straight world again, and you’re free and you’re like, “OK, what’s it like? What do you have to do again to please a woman?” But I changed that because it just seemed too jokey, and I think the idea of sucking the dick of a city is more universal.

Paste: You touched on this in a post on your website this past summer, but, in regard to the title Skeletal Lamping, what skeletons are you spotlighting and have you gotten any further with the question you posed about whether you want to shoot them or capture them?
Barnes: [laughs] I just want to let ’em go. I always want to change and evolve and reject the past and not really worry about it so much. I don’t feel the need to inspect my motivation for things I’ve done; I just want to continually move forward. But I think, when you make art, like a record or whatever, it’s sort of frozen in time, so it’s like turning the light on in a room and leaving it on forever. But you can also walk away from the room with the lights on—or keep paying the electric bill, but move into a new house.

Paste: How, if at all, did the negative reaction you got about the Outback Steakhouse commercial affect your approach to the new record?
Barnes: The backlash from the Outback commercial really motivated me to push myself, to make something bold and different so people couldn’t marginalize me. When someone calls you a “sell-out,” they’re basically saying you have no value; that you’ve given it up for your bank account—”well,” I thought, “I’m going to prove you wrong.” It filled me with a great energy, the desire to show these people, even though they’re sort of invisible. Like when anyone writes on a blog they’re called like AJJohnson622 or whatever [laughs], it’s like they don’t really exist. But I think what they’re saying, the thought they’re posing—if it matters to you like it matters to me, I wouldn’t want people to think I was a sell-out. But then, I have a complicated relationship with that concept, the idea of selling out. I [eventually] realized that selling out isn’t possible—I can’t sell out because I don’t make music to make money; I make music because I feel compelled to do so. I never sit down and say, “OK, I haven’t written a song in a while. I gotta do this.” It’s never like that. I want to do this. This is what gives my life meaning, what gives me a sense of fulfillment. I’m not really trying to sell records. I mean, I’d like to sell records because it makes life easier when you do sell them, but that’s not the fundamental motivation behind it. I also can understand how people get upset ’cause [when you sell a song to a commercial], in a way you’re sacrificing the song, potentially forever. You know, if it develops negative associations with people, or if it deprives people of having a romantic connection to the song, because you can’t really have a romantic connection to Outback Steakhouse. Or you can, maybe, but it probably wouldn’t be on the same level.

Paste: Like, “Man, that Bloomin’ Onion was so good!”
Barnes: [laughs] Yeah, I’ll never forget that time I spent… But I can really understand both sides of it. It still kind of hurts me though. No one had ever really said that to me before, no one had ever called me a “sell-out.” It would’ve been impossible, really, unless they would be like—I mean, some people are actually like, “You were on Conan O’Brien, you’re a sell-out.” Some people are actually like that; it goes that far. Like, “Oh, I can’t like this band anymore because they were played on the radio.” I mean, some people are like that. But the sad reality is that—if you’re an indie artist—you have to look to other avenues to earn a living. And either it’s going to be a day job that has nothing to do with music, or you can try to find some way to use your talents to earn a living. And that was actually the first time I had ever been offered anything like that, and I was so broke, and I was like, “I can’t say no to this.” I couldn’t project into the future and imagine what the ramifications were going to be, or how it would be different, and I think that if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t do it again, but only because of the scope of it—only because it’s been like their ad campaign for like three years and it’s not going away. Most bands, maybe they do a commercial and it’s there for like a month, two months, tops. And this thing has been like [McDonald’s’] “I’m lovin’ it.” And so, [if I’d known it would be like that], I definitely wouldn’t have done it. But I was so green at the time—I didn’t have representation and I had no previous experience to put it up against. So it’s the price of an education on some level. But it also really helped me financially. I was like, “Well, let’s put some more money into this next production. And now I sort of compare it to an actor or director that will make like a big-budget film in order to fund their pet project, their art project. Like I said, sometimes you have to suck a little dick to get by, just like everyone else has to suck dick, you know? Everyone has to have this other job or this other thing that allows them the freedom to do other things. But now, whenever I’m doing [anything commercial], I try not to incorporate

Of Montreal songs in that world. If I’m gonna try to do something for hire, I don’t want to use any Of Montreal songs. I want to just make something new.

Paste: Well, now you can be like, “I’m the guy who wrote the song for the Outback commercial.”
Barnes: It’s a funny thing, too, ’cause other people—people who aren’t at all connected to the indie world, like my dad’s friends, you know, people like that,—they’re so impressed. They’re like, “Oh my god, that’s so great, man! That’s so wonderful!” Like for them, it’s like validation. And if you’re applying for a loan, and someone’s like, “What do you do?” You say “musician.” “Oh really? Have you written any songs I might know?” And then you can say, “Well, have you heard the Outback Steakhouse commercial?” [laughs] And then they’re like, “Yeah, I’ve heard that! Aw, that’s fantastic! I can’t wait to tell my friends that I met the guy who wrote the song from the Outback Steakhouse commercial!”

Paste: Tell me about how Dylan Thomas influenced the lyrics on Skeletal Lamping.
Barnes: He’s one of those writers that he has such an interesting—almost like a self-produced lexicon. His style of phrasing things and putting words together is so original that it bends my mind. A lot of the song titles from Hissing Fauna and Skeletal Lamping were results of reading a Dylan Thomas poem and then trying to stay in that spirit, that frame of mind, and just write whatever comes to mind. Just sort of automatic-writing style, where you just turn off your mind and write whatever comes out. It’s great; it’s almost like a drug, like a really quick drug. You just like read one poem and try to absorb it and be influenced by it, and see what comes out of you after taking the drug. I mean, I don’t really do drugs like that, but if drugs did that for me, then I would because it’s always good to bend the mind, to gets it out of the grocery-list mentality. You know, you make lists—these are things I have to do today, and these are the people I’m gonna talk to and it’s always situation-appropriate. But if you bend your mind, you can get out of the trappings of that. It can help you think really creatively.

Paste: Have you ever done any kind of trance writing in the past? Written songs where you let go like that?
Barnes: Yeah, I do that a lot, at night usually, when everyone else is asleep and I can just—almost like a meditative state, where I try to shut everything off and just let the stream of consciousness flow, and I come up with some things that I find really interesting. So I do a lot of writing like that. And it’s also good [to try that] if you have music [already]. I think a lot of hip-hop artists do this, where they just sort of ad-lib and don’t really know what they’re gonna say next, and maybe do 10 tracks of ad-libbing, and then pull something interesting together. I definitely do that.

Paste: Where do you think the collagist aesthetic on the new album comes from?
Barnes: I guess it comes from the desire to create something unpredictable, and so it’s things that are seemingly out of place with each other, which helps create that unpredictability, ’cause if you’re listening to a song, a lot of times you can predict where the person’s going to go—you know how they’re gonna resolve the melody line and when the chorus is gonna come, and to me that’s not that exciting. I wanted to make something that was really unpredictable because that’s the kind of music I like listening to, and I want to make the kind of music I want to hear. So what I’m trying to do is make something that’s really unpredictable, but also has an immediacy to it—something that’s not completely out there and so impossible to follow that it hurts the brain. I don’t want to hurt the head too much; I just want to create something interesting that has unexpected twists. When I listen to the first two Os Mutantes records, I can listen to them all the time because they’re speaking a language I don’t understand, so it has a mystery. Musically, if you’re not following along, and you’re not looking at the CD player and seeing, “OK, this changed from track 4 to track 5,” you don’t even know when one song starts and the other ends.

Paste: I had difficult time, when we were listening to the album the first time, trying to figure out where the track breaks were. I took notes, but when I went back and looked at it again, they were all wrong.
Barnes: A lot of times, when it would’ve made sense for it to end in one place, we were like, “No, let’s just include that other thing and say it’s part of the same song.” I wish there could be hyphenated track listings or hyphenated track markers—like, “OK, this is track 6.2 or something.”

Paste: A lot the past records you’ve put out with of Montreal have been really fantastical, but I feel like this one has almost a space-age vibe to it.
Barnes: I really want to make now music. I want to make music that feels progressive, like it’s reaching toward the future rather than being this sort of anachronistic retro thing. In the early days, I wanted to make something retro. That was the kind of music I was into. But now I really want to push music into this new area it’s never been before, and I haven’t yet, but that’s definitely the motivation. So I think that might give [my recent music] a sense of being more progressive. At least, the intent was to make something progressive. I feel like music is going in a really great direction. There’s a lot of bands that are doing really interesting things—bands like Health and Gang Gang Dance and Deerhoof and Animal Collective. I feel like we’re in the middle of something amazing, that people are going look back on 20 years from now and be like, “Holy shit! All these classic records were being made during this period,” like when I think about The Pretty Things and Pink Floyd and The Beatles, and all these bands making amazing records in 1967. And I hope that this continues, where people are using the technology of the time, the instruments that are there that weren’t before to create something now, something that really feels like this time period. Even if it sounds dated 20 years from now, it doesn’t matter as long as it has a personality and an identity outside of anything before or after. I mean, everything is inevitably going to sound dated. It’s amazing to me how the ’80s—the sound is such a really strong… it has such a strong personality, and the fashion…

Paste: The gated drums, the synthesizers…
Barnes: Yeah, everything. And I think that’s so fantastic. Like, the ’90s, it had that [distinct identity] to some degree, but not on that level like the ’80s. And people joke around about the ’80s—it definitely seems silly, you know, and we kind of laugh about it, but that’s really all you can hope for: to create something that has such a strong identity that it’s impossible to take it out of context.

Paste: Earlier you were talking about the way the tracks on Skeletal Lamping jump into each other and the erratic way the album is sequenced. All that chaos, when I’m listening to it, snaps me in and out of these trance states. What role do you think chaos plays in your music?
Barnes: Well, this is the first record where I really tried to incorporate tension, and tried to build tension in the songs and not just make it as melodic as possible. I tried to incorporate elements of dissonance. I think it’s really exciting to work in that area because that’s kind of a heavier, deeper form of composing, because you’re touching on all these different emotions. In the past, I’ve done a lot of electro-disco pop, which is basically like one emotion, maybe happy, with slightly intellectual lyrics. But this album, musically, I wanted it to have more depth and to create something that’s more mesmeric at times, even anxiety-producing at times, and in a way reflect my state of mind or the human condition ’cause you’re never just happy and you’re never just sad, there’s always varying levels of everything from moment to moment.

Paste: Why did you choose “Id Engager” as Skeletal Lamping’s first single?
Barnes: We felt like it was dancey and fun, but it was hard to pick one song.

Paste: Are you gonna put out a few singles?
Barnes: Yeah. We’ll definitely do a couple, but “Id Engager” seemed like a safe choice because it’s not such a dramatic departure from Hissing Fauna but it’s also kind of representative of the new record because it has so many different sections and it’s sort of out there, sort of like the freak-disco song on the record. I really pushed for “For Our Elegant Caste” because I thought that was a bit bolder of a statement. But, you know, people on the business side were like, “Well, maybe that might be a bit too much for the first single.” [The song’s chorus feature the lyric: “We can do it softcore if you like, but you should know I take it both ways.”] I feel like there’s no real way to ease people into this album—either they’re going to open-minded and cool with it or they’re not. So I felt like there was no real reason to try to dumb it down or pick the most accessible track. But at the same time, I like “Id Engager.” It’s not a totally simplistic love song. There is depth to it. And I think it’s an interesting song because the lyrics in the verse are in opposition to the lyrics in the chorus. The lyrics in the verse condemn this hedonistic, superficial relationship, and warn people against it. But in the chorus, there’s this unapologetic lyric about, “I just want to play with you, I don’t care about having a deep relationship. I just want to have a superficial, noncommittal experience.” It’s like the two voices are sort of fighting each other.

Paste: Sounds like something that goes on in people’s minds all the time.
Barnes: Yeah.