Clamour for glamour...
ONE/HISSING FAUNA, ARE YOU THE DESTROYER?/OF MONTREAL
He spent the winter on the verge of a total breakdown while living in Norway. Stuck in this crisis, he relied heavily on the drinks and the chemicals, asking them to shift his mood back back to good again, before fatigue set in, leaving him to sleep away another day. At the moment, sleep evaded him, so he buried his head in a book, over-thinking, trying to restructure his character. And when that didn't work he lied awake at night praying to a God no one else had heard of, waiting for some high times to come again. And come they did, once he plugged in his guitar, fiddled with the knobs, dubbed some vocals, and let his words jump from the page to the stage. What came next was this, the intimate avant garde ruminations of the one they call Kevin Barnes and his traveling wilburys, known to you and me as Of Montreal. Now if you were been paying attention this year, then you would have noticed that 2007 has been all about the little bands that could breaking out into the spotlight, crafting music far more astonishing and fine tuned than that of their chart topping "veteran" counterparts. Of Montreal is one such act. You'll be hard pressed to find another post-modern rock album that is damn near perfect from track one onwards; An album that is tight and focused, yet ready to fall apart at the seams at any moment, sometimes within the span one track. [Check She's A Rejector]. The emotional clarity Barnes and Co. sought leading up to and throughout the duration of this album's creation is mirrored in the words, the rise and fall of a track's backing beat [see the bridge of Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse, in which the beat drops slightly evolving into the sound of grinding gears, or the musical depiction of a migraine as Barnes' inner monologue repeats aloud "I'm in a crisis. I need help. Come on mood shift, shift back to good again. Come on mood shift, shift back to good again. Come on, be a friend!"]. The vocal dubs, the layered harmonies, the tonal shifts, and radical sonic experimentations should all be oh so overwhelming, but here's the thing: they're not. These songs and compositions just emote til they're dead, keeping it physical, cerebral, and most importantly, relatable all at the same time. Hissing Fauna, you are NOT the destroyer.
KEY TRACKS: Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse/A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger/The Past Is A Grotesque Animal
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