2008-10-01 - Rolling Stone

The Surreal Life

– Rolling Stone, 2008-10-01

Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes is obsessed with Prince, suicide, and borrowing his wife's tights. Meet rock's newest damaged genius.

There are many things that Kevin Barnes' wife might prefer he not talk about. For instance, when she became pregnant a few years ago, the idea of becoming a father so terrified Barnes that he considered committing suicide. Or that after his daughter was born, his misbehavior on the road nearly destroyed their marriage. Or that he suffers from chronic depression, which he treats with the powerful antidepressant Cymbalta in a haphazard regimen. "I take it every three days or so," says the 34-year-old leader of the cult-fave psychedelic pop group Of Montreal. "I should probably take it more, but I kind of like that it messes up my mind. Every day is like a roller coaster — sometimes I feel really good, and sometimes I feel all tingly." Today is a Cymbalta day, which makes Barnes feel "introspective and weird." In the Athens, Georgia, band's industrial rehearsal space, downwind from a chicken-processing plant, Barnes stands quietly among his cheerful, PBR-drinking bandmates, with a purple Vitaminwater at his feet and a glossy Rickenbacker strapped to his slight frame. Dressed like Ziggy Stardust on a casual Friday — skintight red jeans, octagonal clear-frame sunglasses, a jaunty blue scarf adorned with tiny white stars — he absently noodles on "Day Tripper" before calling the song "Triphallus, to Punctuate!" from the band's new album, Skeletal Lamping (out October 21st). Three of his bandmates grab basses and pick out complex, strangely melodic lines as Barnes lets loose with an effects-heavy series of "ooh-ooh-oohs" that sound like Freddie Mercury on helium.

As with the last two Of Montreal records, Barnes recorded Skeletal Lamping (the title came to him after reading a Dylan Thomas poem) at home on his computer. An idea-packed pastiche inspired by Brian Wilson's SMiLE and Prince's Sign o' the Times, Lamping boosts the group's oddball pop with its polyperverse, sexed-up lyrics and kitchen-sink range — from hip-hop and disco to freaked-out soul and Stones-y blues. It arrives just a year after Barnes inadvertently introduced himself to the masses by allowing Outback Steakhouse to use his 2005 song "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games" in its ads. (The Australian-themed chain added didgeridoo and changed the lyric "Let's pretend we don't exist/Let's pretend we're in Antarctica" to "Let's go Outback tonight/Life will still be here tomorrow.") "They told me it was just going to be a radio jingle," he says. "And of course it wasn't — it became the anthem of Outback Steakhouse. The reality is it's definitely not good to sell a song to a commercial, as far as allowing people to have their own memories of a song." Barnes posted an anguished essay, "Selling Out Isn't Possible," online, writing, "The pseudo-Nihilistic punk rockers of the '70s created an impossible code that no one can actually live by."

But looking back, Barnes says the fear that he'd damaged his credibility fueled Lamping's adventurous spirit. "I was like, 'If you're going to call me a phony, I'm going to prove that there's nothing about me motivated by record sales,'" he says. Take Georgie Fruit, a character Barnes introduced on Of Montreal's 2007 album Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, and in whose voice he sings much of the new record. "He's an African-American man who was in an R&B band called Arousal in the Seventies," Barnes says. "They didn't go very far, and he ended up in prison, where he had a lot of weird experiences and decided to be a woman. So he had a sex change. He's very free — I think of him as a genderless superhuman, untouched by taboos or the boring parts of our culture." (Barnes is considering an Arousal "reissue" as a side project: "It would be totally fun." He's also working on an album with MGMT's Andrew VanWyngarden under the name Blikk Fang.)

Of Montreal's live shows have evolved into over-the-top glam spectacles involving surreal props, whimsical sets and multiple costume changes — and, on one occasion, a fully nude Barnes performing against projected clips of Seventies gay porn. As the tours have grown increasingly baroque, Of Montreal have developed a reputation as kind of a Grateful Dead for arty, sexually ambiguous kids (plus David Byrne and Bono, who have both been spotted at gigs) who use the shows as an opportunity to dress up in hypercolorful garb, apply liberal amounts of makeup and glitter, and get supremely elevated on booze and drugs. In a few weeks, the band is heading off on its biggest tour yet, a theatrical production complete with elaborate costumes (drag, mythological creatures, giant kimonos), Madonna-size video screens and a cadre of "performance artists" who will act out choreographed scenes, including a brawl in a Deadwood-style saloon. "The inspiration is very Michel Gondry," Barnes says. "Or the kid in Rushmore that puts on those productions."

At rehearsal, Barnes' five bandmates appear to have been sent over from Indie-Rock Central Casting. Guitarist Bryan Poole has a Neil Young look involving bushy sideburns and an awesome tricked-out art project of a car (with a complicated back story about an artist friend's attempt to assemble a militia to capture a mysterious local known as the 8-Track Gorilla); bassist Davey Pierce lives in a garage next door among at least a dozen vintage mopeds in various states of operability; synth player Dottie Alexander sports a pink cheerleaderish skirt and polka-dot tights; and multi-instrumentalist Jamey Husband has an ascotlike scarf that recalls Fred's from Scooby-Doo. Rocking a cool straw hat and an unbuttoned cardigan without a shirt is drummer Ahmed Gallab, the latest addition. Gallab (who's been in town for less than a month and lives in the loft above the rehearsal space) emigrated from Sudan when he was a kid, and is eagerly waiting for rehearsal to stop so he can break his Ramadan fast. "There's two sides of Of Montreal," Barnes explains the next day. "There's the recorded music, which I've been predominantly doing myself. But the performing band is collaborative, and everyone is deeply invested emotionally and financially."

Barnes grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, a well-off suburb of Detroit. "I listened to a lot of poodle rock," he says. "Mötley Crüe and Ratt were my favorite bands, and I covered my bedroom with pictures I cut out of Hit Parade and Circus." When he was 13, his parents — an accountant father (with dreams of becoming a stand-up comic) and teacher mother — bought him a black Pearl drum kit like Tommy Lee's. He formed his first band, Wit's End, singing and playing drums with a local kid named Mark Tremonti, who went on to become the guitarist in Creed. "Kevin was always a real talented guy," Tremonti recalls (the two haven't spoken since high school). "And he had a really cool voice and an artistic edge to him. Just to be able to write songs at that age was amazing. Our best song was 'Pull My Trigger.' It was pretty much a sex, drugs and rock & roll type of tune. You know, that Mötley Crüe thing. Dangerous lyrics. For a group of eighth-graders it was pretty edgy."

A year later, Barnes' father lost his job and moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, to look for work, leaving Barnes with a profound feeling of uncertainty. He fell into his first major depression. "Things were fucked up, and I was getting into trouble at school," he says. "Even though I wanted to be a rebel, there was a part of me that was sweet and wanted to be accepted." (Tremonti remembers, "He didn't really adhere to authority — he was a guy who probably got in trouble more than the average kid.")

Barnes began suffering increasingly debilitating anxiety attacks, culminating in what he refers to as "a weird drug experience." "It was my birthday and my friends bought me all this pot," he says. "Maybe because I was still developing, I had this bizarre reaction where I totally lost my mind. I really thought I was dying. After that I became conscious of how vulnerable we are psychologically. I still feel touched by that experience, which used to bother me. Like, what the fuck is wrong with me — I still feel as crazy as I did when I was a teenager. But now I feel like it's good, like it fuels my creativity."

In Florida, Barnes made a crucial discovery — British Invasion rock, particularly the Beatles, the Kinks and the Rolling Stones. "I was delivering pizzas, and I got The Kink Kronikles on vinyl," he says. "I put it on a cassette and listened until I wore it out." Playing along to an early Stones comp on guitar, Barnes taught himself chords, and by the time he finished school, he had released a collection of tunes on the influential indie label Bar/None. In search of a band, he headed to Athens after seeing the classic documentary Athens, GA. Inside/Out. "I was just dying to find like-minded people to play with," he says. "But I never thought in a million years that I would ever have a career in music — I was just a kid with a four-track recorder with no friends and no prospects."

Athens has two abiding passions: University of Georgia football and off-kilter art rock. Best known as the birthplace of R.E.M., Athens also nurtured freaked-out proto-alt bands such as the B-52s and Pylon, who exploded from acid-fueled UGA parties in the early Eighties. A decade later, when Barnes arrived fresh out of high school, a new scene was starting to take off — centered around a tight group of Beatles-and-analog-recording-obsessed indie bands that referred to themselves as the Elephant Six Collective. "It was just a great explosion of talent," Barnes says of his early years there. "Very bohemian, everyone living together, three or four people sleeping on the floor, everyone playing on each other's records. And there was the excitement of seeing Michael Stipe at a house party, wearing a straw hat, looking really cool. I'd be like, 'Oh, my God.'"

Until 2004's awesomely titled Satanic Panic in the Attic, the first Of Montreal record Barnes made by himself, the band was mainly inspired by the Elephant Six groups (Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control, the Apples in Stereo among them), whom Barnes befriended shortly after moving to town. "They were kind of like big brothers to me," he says. "I sort of worshipped them — like, God, they're making records and going on tour, they have a publicist, a booking agent, all these things." Living together in a series of communal houses, including a $400-a-month brick bungalow he shared with Neutral Milk leader Jeff Mangum ("It was a total party house — we had a skateboard quarter pipe in the living room and no heat"), Of Montreal cut several low-fi albums between day jobs. "We all wanted to sound like the Beatles," Barnes says. "And everyone was turning each other on to lost psychedelic classics — like someone would go on tour and discover, like, Os Mutantes or the Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow and bring it back to the circle. Everyone would be really influenced by them."

Of Montreal's breakthrough, 2007's Hissing Fauna, veers from synthy electro pop to sun-splashed R&B inspired by psychedelic-soul great Shuggie Otis (name-checked on the standout "Faberge Falls for Shuggie"). On about half the songs, Barnes' vocals shift into a life-affirming falsetto — but the lyrics are more harrowing than groovy. Hissing Fauna's emotional center, "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse," finds Barnes singing, "I'm in a crisis/I need help/C'mon mood, shift back to good again . . . chemicals don't make me sick again."

Barnes met Nina Twin — a talented visual artist and musician — at a gig in Oslo in 2001. After a long-distance courtship, she moved to Athens and joined the band on bass. When she became pregnant in 2004, the couple moved to Nina's native Norway to take advantage of the Scandinavian nation's free health care. "The government actually pays you when you have a child," Barnes says. "So we said, 'Fuck it, let's put everything in storage, go to Norway and see what happens from there.'"

Barnes suffered the deepest depression of his adult life, becoming mired in anxiety, paranoia and persistent thoughts of suicide. (Heimdalsgate is the name of the street where they settled in Oslo.) "I was totally isolated, totally broke, we were couch surfing, and I had never imagined myself a father. I found the concept of having a child terrifying, and it is terrifying. There was so much terror in my mind. It was so much easier to live in a dream state where all I had to worry about was myself." And as scary as the pressures of fatherhood were, the fear that he'd have to give up music was worse. "We had been a band for seven years, but never had any commercial success," Barnes says. "But the thing that motivated me wasn't praise or acclaim — it was the process of creation. So there was no reason for me to stop making music, until there was the idea that, fuck, if I have a kid . . . I'll have to stop fuckin' around and take care of my kid."

Encouraged by their booking agent, the couple returned to the U.S. to launch a tour behind the surprisingly popular Satanic Panic. After an attempt to bring their daughter, Alabee, on the road failed, the tour continued without Nina — who became increasingly resentful of being left behind. "Understandably so," Barnes says. "Taking care of a baby is nowhere near as much fun as going on tour."

With Nina at home, and fueled by champagne and antidepressants, Barnes began bringing his glam superqueen live-show persona to the afterparties. "I think the medication allowed him to function, but it also caused his psyche to become more disassociated from feelings like empathy — especially when alcohol is involved," says guitarist Poole, who records his own psychedelic side project as the Late BP Helium. "He'd do stuff like come up to you and stick his hand down your pants and start jerking off your dick. Or, like, try to make out with you, or take all his clothes off and just start walking around at parties."

Nina and Alabee moved back to Norway, and for half a year Barnes went on without them. But then something clicked inside. "I was looking for another Nina, in a way," he says. "But I realized what I had with her was so special. And I was missing Alabee a lot. My whole life I've been sort of detached emotionally, but with Alabee I understand true love. When I'd go visit them in Norway, Alabee would stand at the windowsill and cry because she wanted to see me. That's when you realize you need to be there for your child, because she needs you, she loves you. And you can't take that lightly."

For now, Barnes and Nina seem happy. They just bought a chic, modern, three-bedroom house in the leafy Athens neighborhood of Five Points, separated from the neighbors by tall, shady trees and a long driveway. The sun-soaked rooms feel homey and somehow Scandinavian, accessorized with high-end kitchen gear, an upright piano, framed expanses of cheery Marimekko fabric, Nina's artwork and shelves full of tasteful books (spotted: Portnoy's Complaint, Gravity's Rainbow, Bob Dylan's Chronicles, Dave Eggers' What Is the What).

Barnes' mom lives in a house next door and helps out with Alabee. When he's not making music, Barnes spends a lot of time in front of his new flatscreen TV, watching NFL games. "When I was a kid, like in high school and stuff, I felt very feminine," he says. "But I'm also very athletic, very into sports. I read ESPN magazine. I watch SportsCenter all the time. I'm a big Cleveland Browns and Indians fan."

Sitting on his big new patio as the sun sets, with Nina puttering around in an embroidered housedress, Barnes seems relaxed. His sunglasses are off, revealing sleepy, vulnerable eyes. But the couple's hard-won contentment could be shaken in a couple of weeks, when Of Montreal hit the road again for a yearlong tour. "I'm not always a very attentive husband," Barnes admits. "And there's no way I could be with Alabee all the time and never do anything in the adult world. Nina's a lot like me — it's hard for her to have a three-year-old as her only companion. But she's going to be performing the first four or five shows, and I'm excited. Hope springs eternal."

2008-10-01 - Spin

Of Montreal: Welcome to Normal Town

With unlimited imagination and the resources to realize his weirdest whim, Of Montreal's gender- (and genre-) bending, secretly sane visionary is learning to have his cake and eat it, too.
By Andy Battaglia 09.22.08 1:55 PM
Photographed for SPIN by Michael Schmelling
Photographed for SPIN by Michael Schmelling

For an impish sprite with a wardrobe full of starry aqua ankle boots and fishnet tights, Kevin Barnes is surprisingly intense when it comes to volleyball. It's a numbing summer night in Athens, Georgia, and we're engaged in some serious business in Normaltown, the larky boho haven that Barnes calls home. His backyard is strewn with tangles of Christmas lights, and his friends -- the tight coterie of musicians, painters, and various weirdo visionaries who help make Of Montreal more than just a band -- have split into gamely warring factions. "I've seen him rip off his shirt in anger for losing," says Of Montreal drummer and multi-instrumentalist Jamey Huggins. Keyboardist Dottie Alexander describes playing against Barnes as "a real catharsis."

The attic in the house up front is where Barnes has worked on a series of increasingly ambitious art-rock masterpieces, including Of Montreal's ninth album, Skeletal Lamping. But it's out here, in the yard past the trampoline and a kiddie pool, where Barnes, 34, and his band function like a true unit. The group just treated itself to a new piece of equipment: a shiny pink volleyball to replace a leaky old one wrapped with what bassist Davey Pierce describes as "20 pounds of duct tape." (They tried.) The grass around the net is littered with melted Cherry Garcia cones and empty beer cans. By any sporting measure, the level of play is unmistakably low. But the spirit! Bodies lurch and dive feverishly. Absurdist trash-talk zings over the net like so many feeble slams: "We need to get you finger extensions!" "What would Jackie Joyner-Kersee do?"

On the Set with Of Montreal (video hosted on Spin's website)

Barnes himself is commanding but relatively quiet. Between points, he riffs on the allure of Aerosmith and tells of a dream in which a bandmate appeared before him with a disarmingly small penis and six swinging testicles. (That would be Ahmed Gallab, a newly enlisted supplemental drummer, not yet in town to be freaked out.) But the Kevin Barnes diving after wobbly shots with an incongruously focused look is a long way from the upstart star who preens onstage amid a mess of cuddly winged monsters.

Of Montreal's practice space is in a complex of repurposed warehouses between a chicken-processing plant and a cement factory, under a rusty water tower on which hobo is graffitied in a shaky hand. A trapeze studio and a bike shop do business among art spaces and rooms made noisy by dozens of bands. They rent two large rooms: one for music and another to build props and sets for their famously elaborate stage shows. The music room boasts a guitar amp draped in pink fur and a chandelier attached to a pulley, built on a whim to raise and lower for the lighting of wax candles.

The prop room nearby houses the fixtures that make Of Montreal come alive onstage. A wooden box swathed in brightly colored paint serves as a makeshift coffin from which Barnes can spring forth as a ghostly white blob, covered with the contents of 30 cans of shaving cream.


"Over here we're building leaf-blower guns," says Nick Gould, who started designing sets and props for Of Montreal as a recovering film-school student and dates keyboardist Alexander. Components of a dazzling stage set stack up high against a wall, with luminescent risers and a catwalk suspended in between. In concert they flash in stroboscopic patterns like something from Ziggy Stardust's yard sale. In storage they're just a bunch of plywood contraptions cobbled together and crammed with standard-issue 60-watt bulbs. "Your output is going to be exponentially more creative when you make it up as you go," says Gould.

Of Montreal's growing stature -- 2006's Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? sold an indie-respectable 108,000 copies worldwide -- owes a lot to the ad hoc spectacles they stage, with little budget but lots of ingenuity. When they performed "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse" on Late Night With Conan O'Brien last year, Of Montreal had so many people doing so many different things on set -- sword fighting, stumbling around in a ten-foot space-god suit -- that union rules required them to be billed as a "performance group" rather than just a band.

Live Video: Of Montreal, "Mingusings"

Such shoestring theatricality has made them heroes to a new breed of like-minded bands. "Kevin is constantly pushing the boundaries of pop, which is inspirational to slackers like us," says Andrew VanWyngarden of MGMT. "He's making the Black Albums and Station to Stations of today."

This outsize ambition has been funded in part by a handful of commercial deals, including a jingle for a certain Australian-themed steak-house franchise that has been the source of much debate in indie circles. "It's all slightly embarrassing, a skeleton in the closet," Barnes says. "But we put a lot of money into the shows that we might not see again. If you want to make a living making music these days, you have to have other sources of income."

"We're always up for an incredulous moment," says guitarist Bryan Poole, who joined up with Barnes more than a decade ago. Back then, Barnes was a shy, awkward twentysomething from Florida with an ear for forgotten '60s pop and a belief that indie rock could be more than glum guys in plaid shirts. Poole remembers him confessing to not having any friends until he was ten or 11, so "he had to create his own world and all these things to entertain himself."

Barnes wasn't alone in Athens, though. When he first moved there, he shared a house with Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel and Will Hart and Bill Doss from Olivia Tremor Control -- each a prime mover in the experimental psychedelic confab known as the Elephant 6 Recording Company. "That was just about making music for yourself and your friends," Barnes remembers. "The scene didn't exist that we wanted, so we just had to make it."

2009-04-21 - Muso's Guide

Of Montreal: on-stage battles and solo projects

By Rebecca Schiller • May 21st, 2009 •

Of Montreal

We had the chance to chat and dine with a red skinny-jean-clad Jamey Huggins from Of Montreal before the band played the first of two sold-out shows at Boston’s Paradise Rock Club. Read on to find out about on-stage battles, the bustle of being on tour, and Jamey’s new solo side project as James Husband.

Muso’s Guide: So the tour’s been going well so far?

Jamey Huggins: Um, yea, all the shows have been sold out; audiences have been enthusiastic, if not maybe a bit misbehaved. We’ve had a few ejections.

MG: What happened?

JH: You know just, them jumping on stage and getting drunk and stage diving. A couple of our people got hurt [laughs] because of our own antics on stage, fighting. Not really fighting, but choreographed fights, a couple of bumps on the head, you know. I’ve got some wretched calluses.

MG: How did that happen?

JH: Drums.

MG: So how is it being back in Boston? I saw of Montreal perform at the Orpheum earlier this year.

JH: Yea, I really liked that place.

MG: Will the show be a lot different being at a smaller venue tonight?

JH: Well that’s just it—it’s a lot smaller.

MG: So will you be able to have all your crazy scenes on stage? Is it harder to pull off?

JH: Yeah, sometimes it works better because it’s so compact. Um, it might look a little bit more effective because it’s such a smaller stage, and it’s easier to transform a smaller stage so that it looks like a different room. But yea, everything’s up there, whether or not it’s gonna function [laughs]. But a lot of stuff broke in New York and we haven’t had a chance to replace them; technical things, all kinds of things. Instruments, amps, videos, boxes, light bulbs. We haven’t had a chance because we’re playing every day and traveling every night. We’re crossing our fingers that we don’t have a technical issue tonight.

MG: Do you think you’ll get to do any sightseeing while you’re here?

JH: I mean, it’s already after six, the doors are in less than an hour, we’ll be on stage in two and a half to three hours, and during that time I just want to get this delicious Thai food down and maybe have a little time to prepare, clean up a little bit. That’s the thing— you almost never get to sightsee. We were in New York for three days I didn’t do anything that wasn’t related to the band.

MG: So I hear you’re working on a solo album now?

JH: Well I’m done with it. It’s set for end of the summer, late August.

MG: Do you know what it’s called yet?

JH: No, I’m still working on the title. I have to come up with all the artwork and stuff in the next maybe two weeks.

MG: And you’re going by James Husband for that?

JH: Yeah.

MG: How did you come up with that name?

JH: Uh, it’s not really that creative, because it’s just a really slight a variation of my real name—a syllable. I think there was this guy who was a manager for a ‘60s group, um, they were called The Pretty Things. And I was reading in their liner notes about these things involving their manager and his name was something like David Husband, and I had never heard of that as a last name but I guess it really is like a common British last name. Um, but I just liked the sound of it [laughs]. I don’t know. Something to give it a little bit of, uh, a shift of focus from reality.

MG: How is the sound of the solo stuff different from Of Montreal?

JH: I’m not trying to go somewhere different with it, because a lot of the stuff was recorded and written before Satanic even came out, and a lot of the stuff is six years old or more. Uh, and it’s definitely not danceable. I mean, I guess you could dance to it, some of it. But there’s no real electronic element to it. It’s much more rooted in like ‘60s/’70s kind of production and instrumentation. If anything, it’s a little bit more like, uh, R&B influenced, but less Motown. More like Memphis-style. And then some of it’s almost country-ish, but I can’t help that ‘cause I’m from Georgia. But I don’t know. There’s a lot of different styles in there. It’s definitely more of a headphone record, not like a Saturday night kind of record. It’s more for the car than dance floor.

MG: So did anyone else from the band work on the album with you?

JH: Dottie plays the saxophone and sings a little bit. Bryan played some ripping electric guitar solos, I guess on only really one song. But that’s the thing about doing what I do, is I can play everything, so I do. I mean, to me, that’s part of the fun—playing all of it, so I do that until I run into something I can’t handle, like a cello or a horn or something. I do play trumpet, but not nearly as good as the guy that I got on the record. And I have this cellist who did some really great stuff. So yeah, other than that it’s a one-man band. But I intend to change that because we’re gonna make it a live touring thing. Most of Of Montreal will be involved with that. I mean I’ve done shows with all these guys. In fact I’ve even done like whole opening tours with of Montreal. But, you know I’ve never fully realized it. It’s kind of like a project that the rest of the band was enthusiastic about. And finally, I guess, Kevin was the real driving force, and kind of convinced me to go and work with Polyvinyl, on the initial release. So I guess I have him to credit for kind of lighting a fire under my ass. When it does come out, we’re gonna try and do a whole tour, treat it like the real thing.

--

A continued conversation (first part here) with Jamey Huggins of the glamtastic American band, Of Montreal: this week read about the band’s almost overnight success in Europe, opening for Franz Ferdinand, and life on the Of Montreal tour bus.

MG: of Montreal just played over in Europe—how was the response different over there?

JH: Uh, well, it’s a weird thing, you know? Like, in England it’s such a hard thing to get an audience. And then suddenly, the last time we were there, or the time before this last time, we were really struggling for some press. And we played a show for like 200 people> or something, did a couple of interviews, and then the last time we were there, we sold out this like 1,500 theatre and had to turn away like 300 people who were trying to get in. It was like overnight we were suddenly like legitimate in London after we’d been playing there for years at these really small clubs. And then like, the Franz Ferdinand concert, we opened for them and did that.

MG: How did that show go?

JH: It was kind of a nightmare, actually. Nothing to do with them, you know, they’re absolutely great. They were really kind and everything, the band, but we had to go on in this really small space. And for of Montreal to do an opening set for anyone, it’s kind of tricky. So we played like six or seven songs, and we had a major technical meltdown where our in-ear monitoring died, so no one could hear what they were singing, we couldn’t hear each other. We fixed it after a couple of songs. But still, it was great. And then we went to France and had a fantastic show in Paris. For some reason Paris loves the new of Montreal stuff. We sold more copies of Hissing Fauna and Skeletal Lamping in France than all of the rest of Europe combined.

MG: Why do you think that is?

JH: Well, I don’t know, the French like electro. And those records are very much, like, beat-driven. Um, but also I think we have a really great press team there. We just happened to get lucky with some really great, super enthusiastic, super influential people. And I guess, they told us this one story about this really popular TV host who has, like, several million viewers, and does this show, and apparently she made some little statement where she held up Hissing Fauna on her show and said “This is the best record of the year, and if everyone watching the show doesn’t go out and buy this tomorrow I’m gonna stab my hand with this…” She had like a knife, and was holding up the record with this knife, and was stressing how emphatic she was that France needed to listen to this strange American band.

MG: I guess it worked, then.

JH: Well, I’m sure that’s part of it. But it’s weird, cause in France, they play us on like regular radio, you know? More of like the Clear Channel rock station or something. So it’s like weirdly somehow more legitimate or something. They don’t have the sense that we’re like an indie band.

MG: So will there be more crazy costumes tonight? Any family members making cameos again?

JH: Yeah, you know, it’s always a revolving cast, depending on who can do it. I mean, if we had our way, we’d have them all every night. People have been kind of trading off, taking legs of the tour. So like we had Nina [Barnes, Kevin’s wife] in New York, and we even had Alabee [Kevin’s daughter] on stage.

MG: What did Alabee do?

JH: She danced, and sort of rode on her mother like a horse. Um, but we have David Barnes and his little troupe of, uh, performers. So I think there’s about five of them tonight. It’s kind of been shifting from night to night. He’s gotten really good at writing sort of little scenes. They’re kind of like one-act plays and provide something like a music video. I see it as they’re like mini videos for each song. Some of it’s like pre-planned, some of it’s live stuff. But in addition to that, uh, he’s taken to writing out like actual characters that reoccur and stuff. So, the last tour, it was a lot more, kind of like, theatrics, dancing around, and choreographed fights, stuff like that. But this time around he has like names for the characters and actual like acting teams and stuff. He’s been writing them on the bus and trying them on stage. Last night, they tried something I’d never seen before, where they had like a Christmas morning. So they had all these performers dressed up like little kids in pajamas and such, and they were all opening presents, but then inside one of the presents they rigged up a smoke machine. So like, three out of the four kids open their presents and there are gas masks, and they’re all excited about their gas masks, and they put them on, and the last kid opens his present and it just shoots out gas. Strange things like that. And tonight they won’t let us use it. Apparently this stupid Great White thing [a deadly nightclub fire caused by pyrotechnics at a concert in 2003], all smoke machines are illegal in every venue in this state. Which is ridiculous, because there’s no fire involved. So there will be no smoke tonight.

MG: Think there will be an extra crazy crowd tonight, being 4/20?

JH: I don’t even know what that is. I mean I know that people smoke pot at 4:20 in the afternoon or something. I don’t know, I hadn’t given it any thought.

MG: So what’s it like on the tour bus?

JH: It’s just like any other environment. Just certain times of the day it might be really wild, and everybody is hanging out. Just sort of doing what you do. And other times it’s like a tomb and all you can hear is some snoring.

MG: What are your thoughts on Kevin stripping at shows?

JH: Well that’s only happened once, and it was like three years ago. I think he’s outgrown his exhibitionist phase a little bit. And he’s actually been dressing a lot more masculinely. But he’s still wearing like a pink woman’s Indian kind of garb. But I think he’s grown into another phase.

MG: Who does your makeup before the show?

JH: Everybody does their own. I’ve gone away from it a little bit, from the sort of glammier stuff. Now it’s more like stage makeup.

--

And now for the final piece in our interview with Jamey Huggins of American band, of Montreal: we discuss the new of Montreal album, Kevin’s gin-induced inner comedian, and the misconceptions that the band’s creativity stems from drugs.

MG: So is there a new of Montreal album in the works yet?

JH:There’s definitely a new one. It’s probably about six or seven songs right now.

MG: Any idea what it’s called yet?

JH: Well Kevin gave all the albums their titles since Hissing Fauna. This one’s called Controller Sphere. All the album titles are in that one song ['Faberge Falls For Shuggie']. Uh, Skeletal Lamping, Controller Sphere, a couple more, I forget. We’re playing two of them, two brand new ones that are going to be on that record: tonight, one of them, and the other tomorrow night.

MG: What are they called?

JH: Well Kevin’s still working on the title, but it’s temporarily called “Cokehead Cokehead.” But, it’s not at all inspired by the drug. The original lyrics are kind of based around the word coquette, and then, we were joking around at this radio performance, and I think I misheard it and said, “It sounds like you’re saying cokehead.” And he thought that was hilarious so now he’s been calling it like ‘Cokehead’.

MG: What’s your favorite song off of Skeletal Lamping?

JH: Um, I think it’s probably ‘Nubile Miscreants’. I really, really love playing it live. It’s definitely my favorite song to perform. And also I think the lyrics are really good. At first I was kind of upset by it. I couldn’t understand who [Kevin] was singing about. But then I finally realized that if anyone should know better, I should know that when he sings about ketamine-addicted teenagers and, you know, college dorms, that he just makes that shit up. There’s nobody. All those lyrics about Rachel, crystal meth, and uh, I think it’s a stroke of genius cause like a lot of our fans think it’s reality. For me, it’s just really clever story-telling. And the rhymes are really good. It’s just not his typical song. A little bit more literal, not just fancy word play. There’s an actual little story there. And that’s kind of what he used to do, in the pre-electro days. A lot of character-based stories with like names and little sub plots and stuff. Plus, it’s got a nice groove to it. A lot of the songs are so, uh, what’s a complimentary way to say this? Uh, I don’t know, it’s kind of like awkwardly arranged. The whole point of it is it’s supposed to be jarring and unexpected. But that one to me is a little breath of like, a couple of minutes of the record that it’s really like groovy. And it doesn’t have a whole lot of like erratic kinda things happening in it. I don’t know, for some reason I just really like it.

MG: Are there any of Montreal pre-show rituals?

JH:Yea, but nothing like really surprising. I mean, Kevin and I like to bathe. Not, not each other [laughs]. But a ritual of getting as clean as possible before we get really dirty. You know, we all sit around and put a little makeup on and stuff and everyone has their, like, beverage ritual: certain things they will or won’t drink before the show.

MG: What are they?

JH:Well I’ll start with the dont’s [laughs]. Dottie and I are not allowed to drink whiskey or red wine before the show but Kevin and Bryan are heavily encouraged to do so.

MG: Why is that?

JH:Well, everyone’s had their own ups and downs with alcohol, and, uh, for some reason if Dottie and I drink anything brown, like whiskey or red wine, we tend to get really aggressive with each other and fight. And so we have banned it from ourselves. It wasn’t like a band decision. We just said that we weren’t allowed to do that any more cause we were fighting with each other right before we’d go on stage. But Kevin, if he drinks whiskey, becomes like a standup comedian, and if you’re lucky enough to catch him on a rare night, or if for some reason, every one in a while he’ll do a shot of gin, which is a terrible thing to shoot, but sometimes there’s nothing to mix it with. But if Kevin drinks maybe two shots of gin, or like a really strong gin and tonic, then he’ll talk to the audience more and put on these little characters. He can be really fun if you just get the right amount, the right concoction [laughs].

It’s the same way with Bryan, you know. He’s hilarious. But he’s become kind of more distant with the crowd. It used to be that he’d talk just as much as we played, you know. Five or six years ago, there would be enough banter in a single show to release a half-hour of spoken word. And a lot of times he’ll just go into poetry or something. Uh, but, you know, there’s also something to be said about being professional. And maybe we shouldn’t be drunk, and maybe we should actually play stuff, play the songs [laughs]. But you know, every once in a while it comes out that way. But maybe for 4/20, who knows? Maybe Kevin Barnes will be stoned off his ass [laughs].

Uh, that’s a frustrating thing we were talking about last night, this sort of presumption that we all use drugs. But besides beer, a little bit of gin, and some kombucha? And some, you know, Ibuprofen, it couldn’t be farther from the truth. People have a really hard time accepting that creativity can come from imagination. And it’s really amazing how widespread that attitude is among people who are fans of music and art, but they, themselves, can only imagine that it’s created by having some kind of mind-altering chemical in your brain or whatever. But I guess if you’ve never written a song or made a painting, then it must seem to you or that type of person, maybe it does seem like they could only imagine coming up with an idea only if they were in a totally different mindset. But if you’re a songwriter, you can be more sober and normal to come up with something really entertaining. And that’s the whole thing. A lot of the songs that we do are so unconventional and so weirdly lyrical and strange arrangements and stuff, but that’s because we want to make something different. It’s like a conscious choice to make something that hasn’t been done before, to make it really interesting and colorful and unexpected as possible. And that can be done, you know, on coffee and um a good night’s sleep, you know? Or at 4 in the morning, whatever. But there’s definitely no speed involved, or like ecstasy or anything, or for God’s sake acid. Which is what we always get accused of; described as like “such and such…on acid.” I don’t know, that’s a frustrating thing, because Kevin, especially, has never done anything like that. But, um, I understand a lot of our fans do. And there’s a lot of college students who come to of Montreal shows as if it were a rave or something and all take X and coke and come in off their tiny faces, high as a kite. And then I wonder if they can even remember the show.

MG: That’s all for now—I’ll let you get back to eating your dinner. Thanks, Jamey!

2008-12-10 - Salmon of Rock

Interview with Of Montreal's James Huggins

I had the chance to chat with Of Montreal multi-instrumentalist James Huggins this weekend. The Athens band is wrapping up the U.S. leg of its Skeletal Lamping tour these days.

If you haven't seen the band live yet, I'd recommend it, if you want to see and hear mock hangings, ninja action sequences, centaurs and brilliant musicianship.

Skeletal Lamping was one of my favorite albums this year, a fantastic mix of psychedelic rock and indie-funk that should pass the test of time.

Huggins has been in the band for more than a decade, and now the collective finally appears ready to make a splash on the charts, thanks to ever-imaginative frontman Kevin Barnes. Catch the group performing live on the "Late Show with David Letterman" Thursday, Dec. 18.

Barnes recorded most of Skeletal Lamping in his home studio, and his big band fills in the gaps on tour.

Huggins, a gifted songwriter in his own right, is responsible for a solo album under the name James Husband.

He called me from a Tampa beach this weekend and talked about his time with the band and Barnes, what it's like to finally hit the "big-time," and his plans for an upcoming solo project.

I will post the half-hour interview in three chunks over the next three days. Enjoy!

SoR: How's the tour going?

JH: This is the very bottom of the tail end of the last straw of this tour. We feel like the whole tour was over essentially right before Thanksgiving and then these Florida shows were added on at the last minute. They're all a little bit lower profiles, so we're just kind of doing them just for like a bonus.

SoR: It's obviously the most elaborate show the band has done, with ninjas and costumes and action sequences. Is this your ideal view of what a concert should be?

JH: This time we were more motivated. The time before it was a little bit less. The scary thing is trying to top this now because there's an expectation when you do something really big and theatrical that then, each time, I feel like there's some expectation that we have to impress and improve. So at some point it's going to have to hit a plateau and go back to something minimal.

SoR: You can't really top mock hangings I guess?

JH: Yeah, but that's exactly how we wanted to do it. And for us the only real limitation on this whole tour was venue size, like stage size, and then, of course, money. But we found some very creative ways around the money thing. As far as the size of the venues, we could just adapt our set to accommodate most places.
Like in Atlanta, that was the ideal setup where we had all five video screens and our little drum towers and all that. But a lot of times, like in Nashville, I remember it was really small. We had to strike the risers all together and only use one video screen. I don't know, all those things we have to work around every night. It's sort of a new setup but the show is essentially the same.

SoR: Do you sense that you guys have turned the corner and maybe moved out of the smaller rock band status and into one of those larger acts?

JH: Well, definitely, that's undeniable. For us, it's kind of like a funny thing that we're talking like we're so old and we've been doing it so long. So we have the same excitement that you see in a younger band that's put out their first or second record.
I feel like we've been trained for disappointment because we sort of expected it to do this six or eight or 10 years ago. And with each record and each tour, we feel like we've just been waiting for the audience. Now 10 years later, to have some of those things start to happen, I think we're all a little bit distrustful of the whole situation.
Because it's like it's great that we can be able to put on the shows we want from larger audiences and have respect from other groups and press that wouldn't give us the time of day two years ago. It's definitely a very interesting transition but I think we're all just slightly confused and maybe wary of the success.

SoR: What would be the optimal topping out point? Do you guys want to sell out Madison Square Garden?

JH: Sure, that would be great!

SoR: I understand that the music scene is splintered today with the larger record companies struggling to make a lot of profit. Now there seems to be a lot of the smaller bands that hit the medium status and never get to that Britney Spears-type status. Would your goal be to sell out the big stadiums?

JH: Well that's the thing. I don't think there is an ideal. It's just different things. We love putting on big, funny things and playing in small clothes. I guess it just depends on what it calls for. We had an offer to do a show at the Hollywood Bowl, which I think the maximum there is like 15,000 people.
I don't know if we'd get anywhere close to that. I guess the last show we did in L.A. was like 4,000 people in a single room, and this was like an outdoor room. So we would have the opportunity to have like an orchestra or something crazy. But that would be something we'd do once, and then the next time we might play at the small, little rock club and put on a special show.
Last time we played in London in a big theater and put on the first, real U.K. big performance. But then we're going back in a few weeks and we're playing this show with Franz Ferdinand in a little club that only holds like 600 people.
I think that it's really just keeping it interesting by doing a variety of different kinds of shows and different kinds of environments for different kinds of audiences. I think rotating it gives you perspective.
Because if you just start doing detached, large arena kind of shit, I can see how that would kind of kill the personality of the performance. I've gotten a glimpse of that a couple of times. I've heard of a couple of other bands that say that they can't stand playing really large, arena-type venues because they don't feel any connection. I can see that too, but I don't think we're in any immediate danger of having to do that.

SoR: Can you walk me through the recording process? I know Kevin Barnes records most of the parts and then you guys learn it and perform it live. Is that generally how it all works?

JH: The last couple of records, that's exactly how it works. So if we're talking current events, yeah. But it's a weird thing because we've had lineup changes with people coming in and out of the band.
Dottie and I have almost exclusively been working with the band for almost 11 years, and there was a lot more time where we were living in a house with Kevin, writing all of our parts, singing all of our own parts on the record, and actually writing entire songs for the record. So that was like a whole other era.
To me, it feels like two different bands, and they just kept the name.

SoR: Does it feel odd to make that change?

JH: Obviously, that's a tough transition, but after a couple of albums and seeing how dramatically it's shifted the whole audience and seeing what that's done for him to to get these records out of his brain uninterrupted by compromise, it's good for him and fun for us to see what he comes up with.
Now, we feel much more like musicians. We're all still songwriters and do our own thing, but in this band it's much more about the performance now. I always say that we feel much more like actors, like we're given a juicy script but it's our job to interpret it. And we do that kind of in our own style with each thing and it's never as strictly regimented as a lot of people assume. We usually take what he's done and create a part that represents some kind of essence of what it was and then play them live.
Because a lot of the songs are really impossible to play verbatim. Most of them have four or five or as many as eight bass lines. No one person can play that, so we'll listen to it and find the major points of what pops out the most and then try and construct one single part from that. And it's the same with all the vocals. Most of the songs have at least 10 vocal harmonies and there's only four of us that are singing.
It's like interpreting it, and that's another reason why the performances have gotten so outrageous because the rest of us in the band need to do something creative if we're not writing the material. All that shit we do. Very, very little of the stage design has anything at all to do with Kevin, or people also seem to think that it has some literal translation of the lyrics. That's not always true.
It's like the band and his brother, and we just get together and come up with these ridiculous ideas and go shopping and we build all the stuff ourselves. All the video content we shoot ourselves. So it's very much a group effort that a hundred ideas are sort-of in a pot and we'll come out with 10 good ones.

SoR: You've recorded under the James Husband name.

JH: That's been an ongoing recording project for me for years that I haven't really ever made much of an effort. I've done shows, I've even done whole opening tours for Of Montreal. But it's mostly just a bedroom recording project that I make mostly for just my friends and to distribute to a few. It's a real small-time project for now.

SoR: Are you still working on coming out with another album?

JH: I'm desperately trying to get into a situation where I feel like I can release something with a label that's going to do it the way that I want to. I've been really reticent to put out like a small release of a single album because I've seen it happen so many times where you put all your eggs in one basket and then it doesn't get any kind of attention. Then the songs are dead and you gotta start over again. ... I want to make a multiple disc release that is not just like 10 songs, 12 songs. At this point, I've amassed so much material that I'm trying to find someone whose willing to put out like a four-disc thing, almost like a posthumous-type thing, like a collection of an entire decade. I think that I will eventually be able to do it and I'm talking with Polyvinyl about trying to convince them to do it.

SoR: Are they giving you an impression that they'd be willing to do it?

JH: We haven't even gotten that far in the discussion. It's more about them agreeing to do something and then we'll have to figure it out at a meeting. But yeah, I would absolutely love to do that, and if I have to make them myself, which is what I've been doing, and sell them at shows, then I'll do that. That's a whole other ball of wax. But to be honest, I'm not sure what's going to happen.

SoR: I figured you had to be working on your own material as well, if Kevin is putting all the albums together.

JH: Yeah, it's actually pretty interesting. We did go into a real studio and we attempted to do this album "Skeletal Lamping" live, as like a live feed. And we did, we went in for like a week. We did about six or seven songs. We thought it sounded great, we were really enjoying being in the studio.
And we were working with this producer who I think Kevin felt uncomfortable with. And then I think he just kind of napped on like the sixth or seventh day and just decided that he didn't feel comfortable and explained to us that it wasn't about our playing or his recording, but that he was really dying for the privacy, the personal experience of staying up all night and recording whatever he wanted in his pajamas.
That's how he works, he usually recorded way late in the night, starting around 9 or 10 until like 7 or 8 in the morning. So he ended up using a lot of that stuff on the album. There's a couple of tracks where it is all of us playing and he's gone back and sprinkled all his crazy electronics and falsetto vocals over it and taken that as a blueprint and gone with it.
So it's frustrating to us because, of course, we think we could do a great live album, and that we're considered, I hope, to be really musical beyond theatrics. It's frustrating to never get a real chance to show that in a recording. But at the same time, we have to allow him that because when he did get full control he came back with something that really surprised us and was actually fun for us to listen to as fans.
It's like a weird kind of give and take sort of thing, but I think we're all at a point where it's not about egos or feeling like we're not getting some sort of opportunity to do this or that. It's more like just releasing all that crap and allowing him to have his voice and we just help him.

SoR: What did you think of Skeletal Lamping when you first heard it?

JH: I really disliked it. Until I started deconstructing it, I didn't see how unique and multi-dimensional it was. At least for the first two or three listens, I felt like it was just really disjointed, frustrating, simple, sexual booty-pop or something and I just couldn't understand where he was going.
And then when he started sending these isolated keyboard parts and harmonies and stuff and I sort of detached myself from my personal interpretation of the lyrics just by knowing him and knowing his family and knowing his psyche, I tried to not consider that. And not consider any of the lyrics literally and pretend like it's some sort of alien voice that's just coming in and doing a little tap-dance and getting off on it. That's what he wanted.
And then I talked to him about it and said, 'God what's the point of this? Why did you end it like this?' And he was saying how it was his calculated intention to make it upsetting and jarring to listen to, and that all of those cut-in-half songs and quick starts and sharp endings were meant intentionally to kind of keep you on your toes. He wanted to make this sort-of difficult arrangement that wasn't like a standard, three-minute song, track by track for 14 songs.
So anyway, after a little bit of context and a little bit of time and then actually trying to piece it together myself and learn parts, then I got a deep respect for this album. I think it might be one of the best. But that defines any good record if you can listen to it five, eight, 10, 12 times and find something new out of it, that is definitely the case with this one.
I would recommend a minimum of 10 listens before making any sort of opinion. And, it's such a short record and it does change so often that you can stomach listening to it 10 times in as many days and it wouldn't be like some kind of chore. Just pop it in your car and ride for a half an hour and it's over.

SoR: I understand what you're saying. With each successive Of Montreal album, I think that I'm not going to like this one as much and than after 10 listens, it's my new favorite. I guess that's the mark of a good album and I guess that's what you guys are hoping for.

JH: The thing is, I think Kevin just disregards any of that when he's making them. For him, I really do think he's making it for himself.
It's really hard being an artist, and especially if you know that your voice is being heard. I can sit around and write stuff and I'll actually consider, 'Does this sound like it could be played on the radio?'
But Kevin doesn't give a shit what anybody thinks, obviously. So he's able to detach himself from any self-editing, and that's a big part of some of the creepier, sexual lyrics. He said he wasn't going to sit there and say, 'Oh I shouldn't say this,' or 'I shouldn't say condoms on my ice-cream cone.' Whatever he wanted to say he just said it, because it made him laugh and it made him smile in the moment of creation. And then he wouldn't go back and reconsider, 'Is this offensive?'
I have to respect that, not to suggest that just anything you fart out is gold. There's obviously some consideration there, and I don't think anybody wants to hear every random thought that an artist has. I do think that freeing up your ego a little bit can certainly yield interesting creative work and I think he's done that very successfully.

SoR: There's an image that people seem to have of you guys. I keep hearing the word 'superfreak' thrown out there to describe the personality that you have on stage. Is that really how you guys are or are you actually just sitting around drinking hot tea and relaxing?

JH: I think it's a very real and natural part of all of our personalities, but that's a misconception. When we're on stage, we are trying to put our best foot forward to put on a show for people to have a great hour and a half.
It's not like it's difficult for us to do that or that we're forcing some other personality on ourselves because each one of us has that in us.
But then, we all have a depressed, sitting in the back of the bus side. We all have a groggy, bitchy in the morning side. We all have a crazy, loud eccentric side.
I guess the thing that bugs me mostly when people say stuff like that is that a) we are insane, or most frustratingly, we are on drugs.
We eat well, aside from maybe drinking a little too much. Nobody even smokes pot at all, not ever. Everyone just assumes that to be inventive you have to be abusing substances and that drives all of us nuts.
Why can't we not have decided to put on this performance with a gigantic, rotating room and a man in a centaur outfit and not have it come from a night of smoking bongs?
It's like, no, we had a production meeting where we sat around and came up with that. To us, it's not that insane. It's just entertaining.
That's the thing that gets lost. It's trying to be entertaining and definitely comical. Some people feel like maybe they shouldn't laugh because this is serious art. Well yeah, it is art and we're serious about it but it doesn't have to be uptight and it can be very playful and comical.

SoR: Is this a band you hope is going to be around in 30 or 40 years?

JH: Well, the goal is not longevity for the sake of a good story. It's like, as long as there's good material and we're healthy enough to jump around, and if Kevin still wants us to work in this sort of arrangement. But yeah, I would definitely see it five or 10 years from now. I don't think we're slowing down.
I was talking with (Kevin) about that yesterday, that it's funny to me that young kids are discovering us that now we're approaching this sort of territory like Sonic Youth. Because right now, we're definitely over the decade hump. After five or six more years, and then suddenly 15 or 20 years, you think, 'God we've been doing it for 20 years.'
I could see that definitely. I'm not going to make any predictions but I will say I don't think we'll be stopping anytime soon.

SoR: I have to ask, based on the band's influences. Beach Boys: Pet Sounds or Smile?

JH: I'm always going to go with Smile because it represents everything that I love about recording, but then Pet Sounds is also fantastic. It's just two different things. It's like when people ask me the Beatles or the Stones. I think it's a ridiculous question because I love them both for so many different reasons.

SoR: I think that's the best answer you could have had.

JH: Anyway, for the sake of whatever, Smile.

SoR: Prince: Purple Rain or Sign 'o the Times?

JH: I would have to say Purple Rain personally. I was always a sucker for the hits and that one has a bunch of them.

SoR: I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me.

2007-03-12 - Wireless Bollinger

Why Kevin Barnes Is Not Normal

originally published in Wireless Bollinger (no longer hosted).

Kevin Barnes is not a guy that you can rely upon to act ‘normally’. Whether this be performing a handful of songs completely nude (well actually, he did wear face paint, a red cummerbund and some sensational black fishnet stockings) or the creation of the character Georgie Fruit (the personality that dominates the second half of Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?), Barnes is not afraid of the atypical.

However, reliable is exactly what Barnes’ recording project, of Montreal, is. Throughout his decade-long career as the mastermind of this band, Barnes has embraced change, evolving from the ‘60s-influenced and character-driven style of The Gay Parade to the post-Bowie, dance-glam and lyrical melancholy of Hissing Fauna. Barnes’ reliability as an artist is not driven by rehashing similar past successes, though. It is borne from the quality of each release and his ability to impart catchy hook-laden pop on every record, regardless of musical evolution.

“When I was making Hissing Fauna, I wasn't really thinking that I was making an album. I was just losing myself in the recording process and using it as a form of escapism. I wasn't thinking about how the songs would fit in with the rest of my canon,” Barnes said. What about the Georgie Fruit persona? “He/she created herself/himself. I didn't sit down and say to myself, ‘I wanna create a new persona,’ or anything like that. It just happened organically.”

Possibly this is one aspect of Barnes’ success: that where some bands refuse to change, or force themselves to, of Montreal have evolved naturally. Either way the development of the new album has been favourably received by both fans and critics.

“I try not to pay attention to reviews. It is rare that I read a piece about of Montreal that I find constructive. Basically, it's either an ego stroke or an ego crusher. I'm one of those people that is more wounded by negative criticism than encouraged by positive comments, so I try to avoid reading anything about me.”

Many fans of of Montreal would have heard the album prior to these reviews as the album leaked in September 2006, five months before the real release date.

“I knew it was going to happen so I wasn't disturbed by it. It was a little disappointing that it leaked so many months before the release date, but it didn't bother me too much. In some ways, I think it actually helps bands. It's always good to get word of mouth going before an album is released. It might potentially hurt album sales, but the benefit of turning people onto the music outweighs the negative. We just want people to hear the music, and it doesn't really matter that much how they go about getting it, as long as they support the band in some way: go to the show, buy a shirt, make out with one of us.”

Hissing Fauna’s greatest evolution is undoubtedly the personal nature of the lyrics, these being a marked departure from the character-led stories of early of Montreal. I ask Barnes about the theme that dominates the first half of the new album: chemical depression.
“A chemical depression is one you can't get over on your own using conventional methods like exercise, extra sleep, healthier eating habits, yoga.
It's not just a general sadness or loneliness. It's a condition not unlike high blood pressure and requires the right kind of medicine to help you balance things out.”

Barnes continues: “I got on anti-depressants and they saved my life. They helped me deal with things that had become unresolvable in my personal life. Unfortunately, they also made me more detached and indifferent. I think that's why my relationship with Nina [Barnes’ wife] dissolved for a long time. It's the trade off I had to make to keep my sanity. Luckily being on medication hasn't slowed down my creativity. I was afraid it would turn me into a zombie, but it didn't.”

The writing of the new album was clearly therapeutic for Barnes. Did he consider that such an honest appraisal may help fans of his understand the realities of depression?

“I hope so. I wasn't really thinking about that when I was recording the songs. It's definitely a very positive thing though – when one's difficult and painful experience can offer support and comfort to others going through similar experiences.

That's one of the greatest things about art, that it can transform the horrid and nasty aspects of the human experience into something more poetic and tolerable.”

Barnes is a noted fan of the writing of Syd Barrett [the founder and early principal songwriter of Pink Floyd], a man who had struggled similarly with depression. Barnes’ description of Barrett’s music could easily be applied to a description of his own: “I just love his free form style of writing. His songs are very catchy and infectious, but also unconventional in their arrangements.” Barrett gained cult-status for his withdrawn tendencies; arguably it was the combination of his depression and drug taking that led to his reclusive nature and exit from Pink Floyd.

“I think if you are already a little unstable, drugs can be very destructive,” Barnes cautions. “There are certain people who can do tons of drugs their whole life and be fairly unaffected, and others that are deeply affected by one experience. I don't mess around with drugs for that reason. I don't need them to be creative and they just make me paranoid and freaked out even more than I already am.”

While depression is a central theme of Hissing Fauna, Barnes has also provided fans with a porthole into his background with references to religion in his lyrics: “The church is filled with losers/ psycho or confused,” and his MySpace blogs: “I have this recurring dream about being in a house possessed by an evil invisible force. [This is] probably an extension of the effects of my catholic upbringing, so many of my weird superstitions can be blamed on that”. What exactly is this weird superstition concerned with?

“Well, it's more a feeling that God is going to do horrid things to me if I partake in certain activities. I don't really worry about it that much, but it is always somewhere buried back in my mind. I realised early on that it was just a bunch of bullshit. I can't understand how people can really believe in organised religions.”

“I went to Catholic school for a long time, and I was also forced to attend church services every Sunday during my childhood. I found it dreadfully boring and I didn't believe a word of what they were teaching, other than the golden rule. I could see all of the hypocrisy and phoniness involved in the church and it made me sick. Now I can appreciate the theatre of it, but it's still too perverse for me to handle. I guess it made me a bit more cynical about adulthood and the ‘normal’ people of the world.”

“It helped me see very clearly what I didn't want to be as an adult. I can't stand most religions because they over-simplify things in this extremely childish sort of way. It is an escape from the insanity of life, but it's an unhealthy escape in my view.”

Another element of Barnes’ childhood that has flowed over to his music has been an early love of theatre – which may explain the nudity/Georgie Fruit thing.

“My parents forced me to join choir when I was in high school to perform in school musicals but I really hated it at the time. I felt it was super lame and couldn't get into it. For some reason, as I got a little older, I started to really get into classic musicals like My Fair Lady and Gigi. When we perform it is very important to us to do something exceptional and unpredictable. We want to offer an audience visual dynamics, as well as musical dynamics. We want the performance to engage people on all levels.”

Will we be blessed with a similarly grand Australian tour? “Right now our Aussie label is trying to set something up. Hopefully we'll be able to tour in June. We won't be able to transport everything from the U.S. tour, but there will definitely be a strong theatrical/visual element to the show that we travel overseas with.”

It is hard to imagine Barnes as an artist settling for anything less than a stunning live show, as he seems highly unaffected by current trends or so-called realities. With this said, I can’t help wonder how of Montreal will next evolve?

“I'm working on a new album now. It will still be poppy and melodic, but more fragmented in its structure. I'm stepping away from the pop song template. I am going to create a bunch of 30-to-50-second sections and string them all together. I don't think there will be any pauses between pieces. I want it to feel like one long piece with hundreds of movements. The tentative title of the album is Skeletal Lamping.”

2005-01 - Thrasher Magazine

Thrasher Magazine, Jan, 2005 by Dan Whiteley

Kevin Barnes, the front man behind Of Montreal, is one of the most dedicated and inspiring people I've ever met. He mentioned in passing that his first 600 songs were atrocious. Six hundred? This guy's paid some serious dues en route to the band's seventh album, Satanic Panic in the Attic, on which he more or less recorded everything himself. And not just guitar, bass, and drums either--there's layers and layers of instruments and interesting sounds. But rather than trying to describe these sounds, I'll just plug the Thraser Rocket Science DVD and say: watch the Arizona section. Life is fun.

Do you believe in Satan?

Sure. Well, it's hard to say. I vacillate between believing in good and evil. It's kind of silly to think about this actual creature that sits there and tries to corrupt human brains.

What's a poppet?

A poppet is this term of endearment that I heard when we were in England. I was at a convenient store, and this woman was like, "Cheers, poppet!"

I was like, "Poppet? Weird ... I'm going to use that in a song." I just try to have fun with lyrics, do some stream-of-consciousness type stuff. It can be so boring when people use generic rhyme schemes or just think about girls when they write. I avoid love songs unless they're really genuine. I try to go beyond that.

Like "butterflies melting on the wall"? Are you on drugs?

A lot of things seem like they could be psychedelic visions or somehow inspired by a drug experience. "Spike the Senses" seems like it could have some overt drug connotation, but I really don't even know where it came from. I wasn't doing heroin or anything. I guess a lot of people get to that state eventually through doing drugs, like, if you smoke a lot of dope and don't get brain dead, you can actually have ideas and think of stuff like that. But I try to get there naturally, because whenever I do drugs, it seems to just dull me. It dulls my brain, and I can't think; I just sort of stare. I think the most important thing about existence is to just be productive and creative.

Do you watch TV?

Not really. I find TV really frustrating. It's a strange drug. So many people just sit in front of it for hours and become zombies. They go to bed, wake up, and go to work. That kind of existence is horrifying. It's just so wrong, and so many people fall into that trap. And it's scary the way it's set up; it's all about manipulation, a neverending cycle of creating these consumers, these insanely insecure people, who need television to tell them what to do and think, to feel sane. It takes the human out of the human's brain. You can't smell, you can't look strange, you can't have pimples, you can't have yellow teeth ... you have to be this perfect plastic human. But I think most people are smart enough not to fall for it.

Any hobbies?

I basically have just been making music every waking moment. That's my greatest joy, sitting there with the headphones on--it's just wonderful. But I like to play basketball a lot, and I really want to get back into skating. I've been thinking about it, but I'm kind of insecure, because I'll suck so bad, and I'll be too old to suck.

You'll get over it. What's a good skate memory?

Trying to do Japan airs off our launch ramp. Except my friend kept breaking his arm, and his morn made us destroy it. That was great, though. We used to spend hours and hours on it before I got into music.

How did you get into music?

Through skateboarding and friends, of course.