You have to remember that time used to move more slowly.
Somewhere around 2001 I heard of a group of bands, “the Elephant 6 Collective,” who were carrying on in the tradition of the Beatles, Beach Boys, Zombies, and Kinks. I started finding used CDs and figuring out who was who, what was what.
Of Montreal had recently contributed
The Gay Parade (1999) and
Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies (2001), and they sounded like exactly what I wanted: manic, super-tuneful, interestingly arranged pop songs. Then
Adhils Arboretum his soon after, and they were simply
always on tour. In 2004,
A Satanic Panic in the Attic was absolutely derided by their own fans because chief songwriter Kevin Barnes had “gone electronic.” (One or two songs had programmed beats.)
In 2005, Of Montreal released
The Sunlandic Twins. Its credits read “produced, arranged, composed, performed, engineered and mixed by
Prince Kevin Barnes.” In hindsight and especially considering what came after, the Prince reference seemed premature in that Barnes later more fully embraced funk and soul music. But in terms of taking full control of his product?
Kevin Barnes made
The Sunlandic Twins one of the great DIY albums of the time, a time in which creating albums on laptops was possible, but not yet common or easy.
Listening back, his compromises are so obviously apparent. The opener, an anthemic burst of life called “Requiem for O.M.M.2.,” has what sounds like exactly what it is: a drum track made of Barnes overdubbing individual components of a drum kit (supplemented with synthesized drum sounds) because he couldn’t quite play them.
Throughout the album, the relative inability to seamlessly edit, or even smooth out and automate mixing and editing choices, is apparent. Yet the newfound freedom to use virtually unlimited tracks is similarly apparent. The result is a wholly impressive if also wholly outdated masterpiece of sorts, a jumble of tracks with three bass parts and barely half a drum track (but a dozen guitars and harmonized voices).
What’s more, it’s the album in which Barnes first seems to have abandoned the innocent tales of nuns, boxers, weird neighbors, and bumblebees and acknowledge himself as a postpubescent creature on this earth. This makes sense, him having recently married and had a child.
That transition from twee character-study creator to flesh-and-blood creature is reflected throughout the material. “So Begins Our Alabee,” (Alabee being his then-newborn daughter’s name) includes the lines:
The pressure of adulthood! Barnes used the moment to turn—forever, more or less—away from the vignettes of his previous songs and dive ever-deeper into himself, probably more than has been good for him, his music, his bandmates, or his fans.
But here, on this album, the forgotten one between the varied-pop-singles, (largely) full-band approach of
A Satanic Panic in the Attic to the psychoanalytical gloom and sexual bloom of
Hissing Fauna, here we find Kevin Barnes. Happy. Sad. Freaking out. And recording on his computer in Norway.
“May we never be stripped of anything we love
“May we grow so gentle, never go mental.”It’s the doe-eyed dope of the earlier albums, but it feels like welcome respite from the stresses that surround it here. And that it slips into a vocal-harmony and (ore cowbell please) percussive jam of sorts with “may we never go go mental / may we always stay stay gentle” as Barnes’ own little jai guru dev just works.
As was always the case with Barnes, the album sometimes feels like a series of recognitions: the Who! The Beatles! Beach Boys! But he adds—especially with the brief instrumentals—moments of Berlin-era Bowie, and yes, some of the funk and soul of Prince.
There is even a bit of popular notoriety: “Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games” may have a bizarre, detached sort of lyric like “let’s pretend we don’t exist; let’s pretend we’re in Antarctica,” but you might well hear it and think, “Let’s do Outback tonight; life will still be here tomorrow.” Because yes, this song was sold to Outback Steakhouse to become a jingle. Barnes, an indie musician, took tremendous flak for “selling out,” though he responded that without revenue, there would cease to be an Of Montreal, and that the money would go toward the band’s always over-the-top drama-club stage shows.
A more direct celebratory tune is “The Party’s Crashing Us.” It marries melodic synth to distorted guitars over the typically homemade Frankenstein’s monster of hand-played snare and programmed drums to build a backdrop for the baroque overdubbing marathons. It may be Barnes’ first ecstatic burst:
“I only feel all right when the V.U. is flashing
“Bombs going off in my head
“I want to grab you, want to scream at you
“No icing me down,
“The party’s crashing us now.”
There aren’t many songs better marrying unique parts—in this case, bass, piano, and programmed drums, mostly, but with voices and other synths incorporated—in complementary, complex, deceptively simple beauty than the album’s closer, “The Repudiated Immortals,” a sort of mental dialogue between creator and created.
It's shocking to hear how dated this album sounds today, especially considering its timelessness.