Of Montreal started out in the late 90s, the brainchild of a straight looking young guy called Kevin Barnes. Their early albums were so achingly twee they made Belle and Sebastian sound like Megadeth (and that's coming from a fan). The Gay Parade, for example, featured xylophones, a cast of characters with names like Tulip Baroo and Gertrude Lullaby, and a song about an owl rescuing a lost child from an invisible tree. Honestly, an album of the stuff was enough to make even the most indulgent folk bang their head against a table muttering ‘god help us if there’s a war’.
Over the next eight years the band switched around musical styles - psychedelic, electronic - countless times, releasing a string of fine albums without ever quite shaking off that twee label. One high point among many was when they perfectly nailed in two short lines the sheer mundanity of life as an indie band touring the UK - ‘up to our necks in crisps and litter/in the van we dubbed the Gary Glitter’.
By 2007, several turns of events later, Barnes found himself living in Norway with his new wife and baby. I know what you're thinking - sounds hyyge as fuck. But Kevin wasn’t feeling it - in fact he was depressed, anxious and lonely. So he sought medical help - and found that antidepressants gave him the clarity he needed to create a new bunch of songs. And the cute characters were now a thing of the past; these new songs saw him draw on his recent experiences in a very literal way. The result was Hissing Fauna, an album built on psychological discord and the effects of those antidepressants (and perhaps other substances). And Barnes, no longer the callow milquetoast, sang with a newly urgent, almost panicked delivery.
A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger tells the story: ‘I spent the winter on the verge of a total breakdown while living in Norway, I felt the darkness of the black metal bands.’ The same song sees him addressing his neuroses while invoking that fallacious Nietzschean saw of whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger (maybe more in hope than conviction). ‘I am older now, I see the way you operate. If you don't hurt me then you die’
And the extravagantly titled Heimdalsgate like a Promethean Curse is an anguished plea for the neurons to right themselves. ‘I'm in a crisis. I need help, come on mood shift, shift back to good again! Come on chemicals!’ And so it goes on.
Doesn’t sound too big on the laughs? What these lyrics don’t get across is this: Hissing Fauna is wild. This is a record that kicks down the front door, starts a party in the living room and dares you to call the cops. That song about having a breakdown in Norway? A delirious disco banger. The ‘chemicals’ track? Hyperactive new wave freakout. Add some insane funk jams to the mix and you have one of the best albums of the decade.
The band’s increasingly extravagant, surreal live performances saw Barnes orchestrating scenes like attempted crucifixions and boxing matches between poodle-women. And, just like Lennon before him, feeling the need to bare his soul by baring his junk, performing naked on at least one occasion. What is it with these guys? Still, what a ride. People still called them twee, though. Mud sticks, I guess.
Next: Tears for Fears
