of Montreal Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?    Label: Polyvinyl Records Release Date:01/23/2007

If you’ve been to of Montreal for long enough, you probably had a point where you realiled that this band isn’t just fun and poppy, they’re actually intricate, innovative, and brilliant. Sure, you may be cutting a rug to their harmonies, but they sure aren’t relying on four chord rehashes like most retro “dance-rock” bands of today. Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer? pushes even further in both directions, with catchier hooks and deeper, darker tones than ever before. With influneces as wonderful as The Cars, Ray Davies, Prince, and Sly Stone, this is a killer album to kick-off a year full of highly anticipated releases.

The album leaps right into what our Athenian friends do best with “Suffer for Fashion,” an upbeat synthy dance-pop song full of vocal doubling and wavering harmonies. However, you quickly notice that this time everything crisper and smoother, the production more refined and varied. From here we’ll venture through a more eclectic sonic world than we’ve heard from of Montreal, songs that are often more focused on emotional/musical exploration than on “fun”. Don’t get me wrong, even the most mellow tunes on Hissing Fauna are beyond catchy, but the “darker side” of Kevin Barnes comes out in more than just his lyrics this go around. He recorded the album during a personally hellish year (familial economic difficulties, temporarily splitting up with his wife/daughter, alcoholism); and while some of the songs are optimistic pop-tunes in attempt to cheer himself up, Hissing Fauna contains some of of Montreal’s darkest moments. Even the 80’s popstar falsetto charged “Labryinthian Pomp” ends up cascading into a jazzy breakdown that’s much more artistic and sincere.

This is most strongly demonstrated on track 7 “The Past is A Grotesque Animal,” twelve minutes of dark repitition that somehow never seem to get boring. In fact, I’d go as far to say this is the best song of Montreal has ever written. Lyrically, the track spouts the thoughts of a man going through severe separation anxiety, confusion, and frustration over driving, thumping, arpeggiating rhythms that bring to mind a man endlessly running from a past that’s out to get him. The lyrics are both seriously autobiographical but still with a hint of Barnesian self-awareness (”somehow you’ve red-rovered the gustapo circling my heart”), some yelled angrily and some muttered defeatedly. The little layers and harmonies build and build, synthesizers and guitar effects sweeping in and out enough to keep your attention without breaking the hympnotic effect of the pulsating rhythms that make the length so appropriate.

Ultimately my compliments for this track the same I have for the album as a whole. of Montreal really latches on to the electro-dance-pop sound they’ve been digging into lately, and by simultaneously accepting the cliches of the style and refusing to be bound to them, they’ve made something ambitious and self-aware. The lyrics are better, the music more interesting and the production more sleek. It might be arguably repetitive and the hokiness can be off-putting at times, but that’s all just the surface finish to a truly great album. I was starting to write the current Elephant Six Collective off as nothing more than a bunch of straight-up pop acts; I couldn’t be happier that someone is making it innovative again.

 of Montreal - Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse

This entry was posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 8:09 pm and is filed under CD/LP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.