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

2010-10-06 - The Quietus

Performance Breakdown: Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes Interviewed

Alex Denney , October 6th, 2010 03:56

As Of Montreal hit the UK, Al Denney talks to Kevin Barnes about the influence of Parliament on False Priest and the history of 'The Past Is A Grotesque Animal', one of our favourite songs of the last decade
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Athens, GA’s Of Montreal were a pleasant fixture on the indie-pop firmament for more than a decade before depression, divorce and a well-documented bit of madness involving a fortysomething, transsexual alter-ego collided with frontman Kevin Barnes’ world and sent the band spinning off in ever wilder trajectories.

Quietus ed John Doran reckons Barnes might be some kind of genius, but that feels like too premeditated a word, somehow – he’s more a compulsive truth-teller; a keenly perceptive fellow whose desire to take a magnifying glass to the fine print of his soul leads him just as often to moments of pathological ugliness as it does pockets of transcendence.

Whatever the semantics, Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? was quite simply one of the most beautiful meltdowns ever set to wax, with ‘The Past Is A Grotesque Animal’ the darkly circling eye of the storm. A twelve-minute, depressive’s tract written from a cabin in the Norwegian countryside, it’s a little like Bergman’s Hour Of The Wolf set to a krautrock groove, and as such completely unfuckwithable. To celebrate the track’s rerecording for a forthcoming Spike Jonze short film, we asked Barnes about its genesis, aftermath and exactly how much his missus minds him taking a hammer to his id in public.

Since Kev is exactly the kind of stand-up Southern gent we always like to hear more from at The Quietus, we also found time to ask him about the latest full-length dispatch from his band’s salty canon, the campily brilliant False Priest.

You’re releasing a new version of ‘The Past Is A Grotesque Animal’ featuring Nick Zinner and members of The Moonrats, can you tell us how that came about?

Kevin Barnes: I guess it was Spike Jonze’s idea, he contacted me and said he wanted to have a special cover version. He’s really good friends with Nick (Zinner) so he put us in touch with each other, and Nick and some of his friends created a track and sent it to me. Then I cut my vocals and sent it back to them.
I wasn’t involved in the musical production of it. I have a lot of respect for the people involved so I knew they’d do something cool with it, they had carte blanche really. I was just really excited to hear what they would do with it. The only direction Spike gave was that he took out certain lyrics he didn’t want to be there, just because it’s such a long track. I mean the song is basically a four-chord vamp on a loop, you can pick out any of the lyrics and it’ll be fine.
It was kinda cool ‘cos I wrote and recorded the song almost at the same time and when I did the lyrics I just happened to throw them together that way. I’ve played that song hundreds of times, but with the new version when I cut the vocal track I could incorporate things I’d done in live performances of the song. So the re-recording is impacted by all the times I’ve played it over the years; I sang it differently.

That must be a difficult song to play live on a regular basis.

KB: Definitely. I always feel sort of emotionally spent afterwards, but at the same time it feels very exciting and empowering. It’s just this really massive emotional workout, and at the end of the song you just kind of fall to the ground.

The song feels like a centrepiece for Hissing Fauna. How much of album did you have written at that point?

KB: It’s weird with that record ‘cos the way the tracks are arranged is basically the order I wrote them in. After I wrote that I was able to exorcise my demons or whatever and felt able to write poppier stuff. I actually edited it down, the real version is like sixteen or seventeen minutes long. But I had to cut it to make it more palatable.

Amazing! I’d be curious to know what got left out.

KB: It was really just more of the same. I could have written a whole album out of that song because of what it’s about – my wife Nina and I’s relationship dissolving and all the pressure I was feeling, the chaos, anxieties and all of that. It was a very insane period in my life. I’d been writing and writing and I had so much material I could have put into that song, but at a certain point I felt like people would just want to eject the CD and throw it out of the window.

Artistically the record was hailed as a breakthrough, did it feel that way at the time?

KB: I think it has a weight to it, an emotional strength to it that a lot of other records don’t have, a lot of our records are more abstract and poppy and fun. There was no primal scream element to them, they’re fairly balanced or whatever. And Hissing Fauna’s the first one that deals with a lot of psychological issues, just because of what I was going through at the time. It has more of an emotional impact than previous records and it definitely helped to establish us in a way. I actually was using the creative process as a form of therapy but it wasn’t really working, I was hoping if I wrote these songs I would get healthy again.

Does that seem like wishful thinking in hindsight?

KB: It’s the same thing that always drives me to create art, to create a world that’s better than the one I’m living in physically or mentally. So I mean the same source of inspiration is always there regardless of how I’m feeling. It’s always trying to create this secondary world that I have more control of or is more romantic or poetic or funny or whatever it is.

Just coming back to ‘The Past...’ specifically, were you surprised at all by the violence of the imagery in that song?

KB: Well I felt like a trapped animal, and I think that when that happens you’re capable of things you wouldn’t be if you were just skipping through some flowery garden or whatever.

Were you prepared for the interest that record sparked in your private life?

KB: I’m not sure it did. I can understand if people are curious, it doesn’t bother me. I performed naked on stage. I’m not too concerned about privacy or keeping things secret for myself.

What about some of the literary allusions in there? There’s that line, “I fell in love with the first cute girl that I saw/ who could appreciate Georges Bataille/ standing at a Swedish festival, discussing Story Of The Eye." Is Bataille a big influence on your work generally?

KB: Definitely. It really is true though, that lyric... I had this idea about a fantasy woman who’s really into Bataille and can understand him or not be freaked out by him. When I met Nina that was the first thing that impressed me about her. I was always looking for someone who could teach me things and stimulate me at all levels, and I hadn’t met anyone like that. So it’s true that we were at a Swedish festival, we were hanging out and talking about George Bataille so that’s highly autobiographical.

It’s quite the opening gambit, as chat-up lines go.

KB: That’s just how I roll, ha-ha. When you first meet someone you test the waters, I wasn’t trying to impress or anything, I was just hoping to be impressed. But when you’re meeting someone... sometimes I’ll act really idiotic just to see if they can take it. Then if they can you think, well, this person’s cool or whatever, and then if they look at you like you’re crazy it’s like "I don’t wanna have anything to do with this person anyway..."

What about the reference to Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf (“The mousey girl screams 'Violence! Violence!’/ She gets hysterical, because they’re both so mean/ and it’s my favourite scene/ but the cruelty’s so predictable/ and it’s my favourite scene.”)

KB: I always loved that play and I always loved that movie, just the dynamic between the two of them and imagining a relationship which can go through such an incredible tumultuous rollercoaster emotionally. Just the shared fantasy life that the two of them have in that play - the hysterical pregnancy and everything - it makes you realise how complex relationships can be when you put these highly intelligent human beings together. We have so many devices that we use to hurt each other and help each other and I just think that’s really interesting.

But you and Nina were reconciled by the time of Hissing Fauna’s release?

KB: We got back together just before it was came out and Nina was extremely embarrassed – well maybe not embarrassed but just like, "Oh this all our dirty laundry you’re sharing with the world, and that’s just your side of the story so it’s not really fair." So she felt a little bit awkward but also she really loved it, and was really touched by the emotion behind it and so she was extremely supportive.
She never asked me to change a certain lyric and I wouldn’t have anyways. She’s an artist as well, she’s a crazy woman so she’s not afraid to expose her inner-life with the world and I think she can appreciate that aspects of art will make you uncomfortable. Especially if you’re speaking from personal experiences and sharing your actual thoughts with the world, so it’s not all just fantasy-based. There’s always a danger that someone’s gonna make fun of you for it or you might feel overexposed but in a way I think the best art comes from that place. People can identify with it more; if it’s too skilfully managed you lose a bit of the rawness that makes art great.

With the follow-up album (Skeletal Lamping) did you worry that your alter-ego Georgie Fruit would be seen as just such a ‘skilfully managed’ contrivance?

KB: Definitely, I mean at first I had the Georgie Fruit character as a songwriting device but it was such a strong pull. Somehow there was this force that was just pushing me to write these songs and they seemed so different from anything I’d done before. So it helped me to have this device where I could say well, it’s not really me it’s Georgie Fruit. But then I realised no, it’s completely me, I couldn’t possibly do it if it wasn’t me.
I don’t really believe in personas being somehow disconnected or different from the artist. The art’s completely that person, there’s no escaping it. You’re not capable of producing something that doesn’t come from your psyche. So I kind of realised Georgie was just another part of me, I stopped thinking about him like that. It’s all just part of Kevin Barnes, whatever that is.

I like the way you’ve run with the funk and R&B vibe on the last few records – psychedelia seems to be such a white preserve nowadays, which is weird given how it was kind of joined at the hip with funk in the late ‘60s.

KB: When I first started getting into music it was total R&B stuff that I was listening to and then I started getting really into The Beatles, and then via The Beatles, The Pretty Things, White Noise, Os Mutantes and stuff like that. And then of late I’ve been way more interested in ‘70s soul and R&B. Parliament was a great discovery for me, they were taking stuff like ‘60s doo-wop and ‘70s funk and psychedelia, acid rock and blending it all together into this crazy collage, and having so much fun theatrically with all the visuals and stuff. So they’ve been a real guiding light for us, because it’s not just superficially interesting, there’s also a great emotional depth to the songs as well because it’s coming from those soul roots. George [Clinton] was a member of a doo-wop group in his early days. So what we’re doing now is taking a lot of inspiration from those guys.

The Janelle Monae thing has been cool [she features on the track ‘Enemy Gene’ from False Priest] – I feel like you guys are aiming at similar things, albeit from quite different starting points...

KB: I think we’re very much the same creature in a lot of ways. We’re on tour right now together, we’re combining our shows. We still want both artists to have a really strong identity, but it’s amazing how much we have in common, there’s this desire to kind of cross-pollinate and it’s exciting ‘cos you never know what’ll happen from night to night. There are just so many ideas bouncing back and forth. We do a thing where a member of Janelle’s art collective, Roman John Arthur, is coming onstage and singing a couple of verses of my songs. What happens is I pretend I’m about to sing a song and then the performance artists come and grab me and hold me back. Then Roman comes from backstage and sings the song while I’m pretending to be really upset, like, "What’s going on?"
We’re incorporating all these crazy ideas into the show and having a laid-back fun attitude towards everything, it’s not like an ego-trip or anything. In a way it’s very much like when I watch the old Parliament shows, Clinton was an important part of it but he wasn’t a lead singer, rock-star archetype you know, he was more like a director. And he realised he had all the insanely gifted people around him so they all should have their moment in the sun. That’s the way performances should be. It’s kind of funny because most performances you go see a show and it’s so scripted in a way, you know what’s gonna happen, the artists know what’s gonna happen, the lighting guy knows what’s gonna happen, it’s almost set up like a Broadway play. But we’re trying to keep that spontaneous element of just doing what you feel like doing on any given night. Just keeping things alive.

It’s also good to hear an artist sing about sex in such frank and bizarre fashion. We’re bombarded with sexual imagery nowadays but beyond the surface raunch people don’t seem to have an awful lot to say on the subject.

KB: Well I mean a lot of it is very clichéd. It’s all ‘I love you baby’ but there’s no intellectual involvement, it’s just very physical or visceral or whatever. There’s no thought about sexual politics. It’s like people are on autopilot when they’re writing pop songs, they’re just like, "Well I want people to feel sexy" or whatever and then they go from there. It’s rare that people actually spend time with lyrics.

Do you feel like Lady Gaga offers something ‘other’ in that sense, or is she just an insanely ambitious hack?

KB: I think she does a lot of things really, really well. Visually she’s amazing, superficially she’s great. And also the people she’s trying to speak to are the underdogs, she’s trying to give her voice to the awkward people of the world in a way and I think that’s beautiful. But musically she’s definitely hitting on a very mainstream level, it doesn’t match her persona at all. When I first heard her I thought it was like Pet Shop Boys song or something – I mean I like Pet Shop Boys, but it wasn’t really what I was expecting, I was expecting something more artsy, something a bit more Grace Jones at least. But it comes across as too safe, but you know that’s why she’s so popular, she can appeal to Jersey Shore people and teenage art kids at the same time so you know, she’s obviously doing something right.

How would you say Georgie Fruit’s role has shifted on the new record?

KB: I think he’s just kind of immersed into my head, I don’t even think about him anymore. It’s like he doesn’t exist. He’s just melted into it, he’s a part of the collage.

And the title, False Priest, you’re on record as saying has to do with a kind of "false policing of the self"?

KB: It’s a funny thing; with a lot of conceptual or fine artists, so much of the creative process is connected to explanation, you know it looks just like canvas with a red dot on it, but it’s actually it’s something completely different. But for me, somehow an idea gets in my head and I don’t really even question it or even think about. I had this thing when I was making song titles for Hissing Fauna, and I was reading these Dylan Thomas poems just to get into a creative frame of mind. I think he has an amazing way of structuring sentences together, so after I’d read a poem I’d just close my eyes and let that influence my own consciousness.

I came up with ‘Skeletal Lamping’, ‘The Controller Sphere’ and ‘False Priest’ during that writing session and for some reason those three didn’t seem like song titles, they had this weird aura about them.

Do you feel with the new record you’ve been able to engage more with the outside world after the introspection of the last two?

KB: I’m always trying to be creative, I’m always trying to pay attention to ideas and be observant. So I don’t really think about whether I’m more or less connected to reality. It sounds really pretentious but I don’t really remember writing or recording the songs especially, because you get so absorbed in the process.

But there is a bit of anticlerical sentiment in there, for example...

KB: I was raised Catholic, it’s my mom’s religion and like any good mother she said, "That’s your religion as well"... I’m joking. But you know how it is with mothers, like, "You’re my child, you were baptised so this is your religion, this is your faith." How ironic. It’s a strange world for sure, but kind of fascinating as well. It’s like a comic book in a way, it’s hard to believe it actually exists and that people actually believe in this stuff, all the superheroes in there like the Pope. It’s hilarious to me, that the Pope is the voice of God and has these powers, he’s not just a man who takes shits every day like anyone else. He’s just a man, he’s not anything! It makes me realise how much we have to mature intellectually, spiritually, emotionally to get to a point where we’re really just focused on reality and not mysticism. I mean as an artist I can appreciate mysticism, but I’m a realist and I’m not about to go believing in my fantasies.

If you were to set up your own religion Alan Moore-style what would it be like?

KB: I guess it would be something in line with progressive humanism, where we just realise that we don’t have any divinity looking out for us so we have to look out for each other. In a way that is God, by caring for each other we’re able to create God amongst ourselves.