of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

1 Suffer For Fashion
2 Sink The Seine
3 Cato As Pun
4 Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse
5 Gronlandic Edit
6 A Sentence Of Sorts In Kongsvinger
7 The Past Is A Grotesque Animal
8 Bunny Ain't No Kind Of Rider
9 Faberge Falls For Shuggie
10 Labyrinthian Pomp
11 She's A Rejector
12 We Were Born The Mutants Again With Leafling

it's the same sort of stuff as their last record but SO much better. reminds me most of recent Flaming Lips, LCD Soundsystem, early Beck, maybe a touch of the Beta Band.

Of Montreal used to be so good.

Anyway, I did post a link on the psych/drone/noise thread to that great looping progression track on the tour only EP a while back!

This makes absolutely no sense to me as a collection of comparisons.

Still a great song.

oh man you guys. i was watching dancing with the stars the other night (!!!) when the weird outback steakhouse of montreal ad came on. well, i mean, at least kevin barnes' kid can go to college now, huh?

Somewhere between that and George McCrae's "Rock Your Baby."

1) I laughed at some of them;
2) Others I found actually fairly interesting; and
3) They are WAY better than the ones on the last album.

A lot of the songs I recall hearing them perform live, but I assumed they were older songs that I just hadn't heard before.. specifically "Suffer For Fashion." I was searching for a song that had the word "Forever" in the chorus with no luck.. But now it all makes sense.

http://www.stereogum.com/Of%20Montreal%20-%20Outback%20Commercial.mp3

Tour starts in a couple weeks.

I like the idea of Barnes listening to black metal. nice record.

I love this bit. And the absolutely jubilant way he sings it, it's kind of ridiculous but keeps that vague twinge of sadness that's present throughout the record.

Still a terrible album title, though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VeIL7juFE0&eurl=

by this logic, you'd have no use for Miles Davis, among many other endlessly rewarding musicians.

saw the san antonio show, & it was quite splendid. this blogger's got a well-recorded mp3 of the "Moonage Daydream" cover they did:

http://media.libsyn.com/media/funeralpudding/OfMontreal-MoonageDaydream-2007-1-21SA.mp3

might have been my favorite part of the concert, except maybe "We Were Born The Mutants Again With Leafling" which was just as unassumingly upbeat as the album version. great song.

I'll try again later.

one time i saw them they covered "breaking glass" and "sound and vision" and i had a similar reaction. if someone found an mp3 of one or both of those covers and shared them with me i would be quite delighted.

That's how I feel about this album at all times. From a The Gay Parade fan here.

Except for the fact that Miles Davis was responsible for the music of Miles Davis; whereas Kevin Barnes is only responsible for things entitled "Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse" and "The Bird Who Continues to Eat the Rabbit's Flower" and so forth. Genius and a knack for choosing and orchestrating incredible collaborators excuses a degree of megalomania. Twee, lispy, white-boy Prince impersonations on records performed entirely by the songwriter in his bedroom do not.

so, what, only macho assholes are excused?

I should like it, but aside from the song that should be called "Chemicals Come On," I am finding it quite annoying. There's always this sense that it's derivative of something, and affected, and just short of a brilliant hook.

But the second side is supposed to be different, isn't it?

the packaging is lovely.

i like the music a lot.

it reminds me of something, sort of...maybe some roxy music and sparks? but with that elephant 6 dna still embedded deep, where even the electronic scientists can't totally destroy it no matter how hard they try.

I'm really digging this album a lot.

It's the best sort of example of the kinds of things you can do with digital recording...everything stretched, chops, altered, mixed, fucked with....a rock record that reminds me of stuff like Girl Talk and The Avalanches I guess...

People seem to think it slides at the end, but I don't know. I like it all the way through.

Maybe it's the really long song in the middle that people don't like but I think it's great....It's like if the Shins decided to be Hawkwind.

Listening to it for the first time right now, and that's the only song that's really stood out for me so far.

Hissing Fauna seems to be the ultra-strong conclusion to one of the finest trilogies of records any band has put out in a VERY long time, made all the stronger by the quickness at which they were released .. all within a 3 year period. There aren't too many bands left who can release such quality music at such a breakneck pace.

Gronlandic Epic is the best song I've heard this week.

also - "YOOOUUUU AIN'T GOT NO SOOOOOUUUULLL POWER!"

Still my favorite of 2007. I doubt anything will top it.

It would take something unbelievably superhuman to do so.

The Past Is A Grotesque Animal is brilliant except for --

OK wait, it's going on for too long.

-- jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 2 February 2007 16:06 (4 months ago) Bookmark Link
quick, turn it off!

-- s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 2 February 2007 16:16 (4 months ago) Bookmark Link

Yes, I don't think I've made it all the way through yet.

I predict zero votes for this album in The Wire's end of the year critics poll.

kornrulez6969, Tim is OTM

still listen to this album at least once a week, brilliant!

Eva, I'm sorry - but you will never have me. To me you're just some faggy girl, and I need a lover with soul power. And you ain't got no soul power, no you ain't got no

SOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLL POWWWWWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRR!

no you ain't got no SO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-OUL!!

Finally got the EP and it's ace. devastating

Yeah, I think this is the best of 2007 so far, by a wide margin. This record has "clasic" status stamped all over it.

Right under Battles and Big Business for me!

Come on, chemicalz.

band would be more successful if their boosters didn't bring the "this band is loved by all who appreciate GREAT MUSIC" vibe

@J0hn D....
But what if it is true?

john d otm. I like em cuz they sound like Soft Boys now

The album's good, but yeah, I hope the days of overwhelmingly saccharine, twee, Brooklyn style indie are hopefully on their way out ... I mean, as a whole it's been the music scene equivilant of Vassar campus for 28 year olds (sorry Br1ts, dont 'know the UK equivilant).

Quartermass, if "it's true" (which: it can't be; what the boosters mean is "this music really touches me in ways that other music usually doesn't," not - as they'll often put it when you boil it down - "o no this band is too good for you stupid assholes who don't love them") then the faithful might wanna couch their defenses in ways that encourage potential new listeners instead of putting them off

Eh, surely of Montreal are the kind of band that even if you're a fan, you're more likely to go.. "if you don't like them it's fine, I can see how they might be grating". I love them myself but I really don't see them having terribly broad appeal. And indeed they haven't, until this album - i think because people really are touched by how intensely personal yet uplifting it is.

what's an example of that, john? i mean, you don't have to cite one, but i haven't noticed it. and if it's true, it's true for anything that soars real heights - not just of montreal. people surely don't have to make that accusation about others who don't like it but i wonder why there seems to be particular bitterness about it in this case.

what the boosters mean is "this music really touches me in ways that other music usually doesn't"

the thing is, for me it's beyond that. the music's depth feels otherworldly. it's amazing to me that it even exists.

much as i liked a record like ys or whatnot, of montreal is the one thing i can look at and say, "i don't understand it. i don't understand where this came from."

Definitely will be in my top 10 at the end of the year.

of montreal is the one thing i can look at and say, "i don't understand it. i don't understand where this came from."

This is mindboggling to me. And I like this album. It's a good album. But I definitely can't follow what about it is so substantively and radically different from a lot of other indie records.

P.S. "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" feels short to me.

ha i was almost gonna say they sound like an elephant 6 band with a fun keyboard loop behind them :/

nabisco OTM. i keep coming back to this like it's going to sound different and it never does.

re nabisco comment - i can kind of see that for maybe those four kind of goofy tracks that follow "the past is a grotesque animal" on the album," though i like them. but when you add up "requiem for o.m.m. 2," "forecast fascist future," "so begins our alabee," "the party's crashing us," "everyday feels like sunday," "family nouveau," "a sentence of sorts in kongsvinger," "no conclusions," etc. and all the little gems otherwise, that's just formidable work. you'd have to name me some other indie rock person who writes songs with that kind of strength.

The lyrics of "Voltaic Crusher" and most of that EP consistantly tear my heart out every time.

@nabisco: Allow me to turn the rhetorical question you've impliedly asked, i.e., "...What about (Hissing Fauna...) is so substantively and radically different from a lot of other indie records(?)" on its equally rhetorical head:

What about "Hissing Fauna..." is so substantively and radically similar to a lot of other indie records?

In other words, of which or whose many, indie (or otherwise), modern (or otherwise) records do you speak? In what “lot” of indie records do you hear "substantively and radically" similar elements of psych/noise/drone in an overtly polygamous, yet entirely (and, at times, astonishingly) natural, relationship with disco/kraut/electronic?

It's been a long while since I've spent any quality time culling ILM for arcane music tips or finds, but have Mr. Ellison, others and I completely missed the boat on Hissing Fauna...'s many, various and sundry harbingers and/or first cousins? In short, how completely wrong can we be?

those stylistic factors work in terms of the music's resonance, but even apart from those things, i'm talking about the craft.

but then i already asked for examples of those who approach this level of craft and hadn't heard back. only been 13 hours so far since i asked the question, tho.

I think I too am getting at Of Montreal's craft in my nabisco, et al, rebuttal by wondering aloud: who else is "juxting our whole position" in a similar fashion?

Perhaps, there exist among Of Montreal's "Hissing Fauna..." contemporaries craftsmen and women that compose, mix, sequence, etc. seemingly unrelated threads of past and future music to equal effect (and success). But if they're there, I've yet to cross their path(s), or they mine.

ok, i'm just saying that apart from the stylistic aspects - the juxting - there are structural factors in these songs that seem to me to be a real cut above, as well as moments of performance execution that are of very high spirit (let's acknowledge that he's done some outstanding things vocally, for example).

I think Coquelicot Asleep... may be the most underrated of Of Montreal's albums.

@Tim_Ellison: I think we're in agreement in our awe, just expressing it different ways (that is, if we have any disagreement in our appreciation, it's semantic).

But to your point, it takes all of 0:37 seconds to hear the first example of Barnes' skillful arranging (where the wall-of-sound density of "Suffer for Fashion" vacates for space, albeit space that's even more intimate; the tastefully over-the-top cascading harmonies of "Gronlandic Edit"; and, the expert back-and-forth panning of drum machines and a rollercoaster bassline introducing the please-be-even-more-epic-as-a-b-side (and long since personal favorite from said LP), "We Were Born The Mutants Again With Leafling" -- to name just a few (more)).

it's also beyond the stylistic parameters you mentioned. "forecast fascist future," for example, is psych-oriented powerpop with no apparent significant precedents as far as how extreme it is. or did you hear that "more blues and tinnitus" track that was on the post-Sunlandic tour EP? That chord progression and melody are so resonant and yet sometimes these things just seem to come from "the universal mind" and you can't even put your finger on where they came from.

...to say nothing of how effortlessly "Forecast Fascist Future" (among others) translates from its studio incarnation to a live delight...

The openings of both "We Were Born..." (also my favorite) and "Sink The Seine" are so out of this world I keep having to ask myself whether I'm tripping or... actually tripping. I can't put my finger on what makes them work for me but it's craft and it's inspiration

i love "The Past Is A Grotesque Animal" so much that i can't myself to listen to the rest of the record.

you should force yourself to. the balance of hissing fauna is as invigorating as sunlandic twins. he's put together astonishing back to back tour de forces, lyrically, compositionally, and presentation-wise. what a feat for someone something like ten albums into it already, to be releasing his most accomplished innovative music now

new video here:

http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?artist=502148&vid=159820

i think it's another example of them obscuring the impact of their music with a bunch of random images. same as when they did "heimdalsgate" on conan o'brien - the content of the song was obscured by all the random stuff going on onstage and the costume changes and whatnot obstructed their ability to deliver the energy in the song.

tim, the randomness for some reason has me thinking of oblique strategery. i agree with a lot of what you've been claiming here -- but don't you hear a precedent in eno's early vocal solo stuff -- particularly warm jets and taking tiger mountain?

i don't know those records well, though i remember warm jets from when i was younger. my sense - and i might be wrong - is that i didn't really buy it as very strong post-psychedelic surrealism. maybe it was interesting or forward-looking musically in some ways, but as surrealism it was far more tepid than someone like syd barrett or any number of other good psychedelic records.

so not knowing those records well, i'm not sure what the connection is with of montreal. sunlandic twins and hissing fauna are very human and personal and i don't see the point in dressing them up in a bunch of amateurish surrealist images.

lyrically, they don't carry the emotional one-two punch of sunlandic twins and hissing fauna. i hear those two records as a pretty powerful tandem -- each an original and compellingly multi-faceted expression of the oldest subjects in pop: new love (sunlandic twins) and fresh heartbreak (hissing fauna). so my comparison isn't meant to knock kevin b, but rather just point out that the quality of eno's early lyricism, however surreal, provokes a headrush similar to kevin's. the musical comparisons are probably more even obvious in recent days, given kevin's newfound habit of covering bowie, and bowie's tremendous debt to eno

i think the dressing up in surrealistic imagery is a confident throwing off of the scent, or maybe a presentation of the broader appeal of of montreal in that the costume changes and such hearken back to the earlier days

while i said upthread that i hadn't come around to hissing fauna yet, i'm frankly amazed by all the covers they've undertaken lately.

beatles' "i will" and otc's "green typewriters" are pretty sweet

the most frontloaded album i've heard in a while...

You say that, but I'm pretty sure Bunny Ain't No Kind Of Rider and She's A Rejector are dang fantastic. And by front, meaning 'first 8 songs' that's hardly a crime.

Front loaded? The first tracks I got into were Gronlandic Epic and Bunny Ain't No Kind Of Rider. I've only just managed to get off of those two and listen to the whole thing all the way through and it's fast becoming my fave of the year.

there's no way that you can say anything after "this past is a grotesque animal" is in any way better than anything before it.

Possible exception being "We Were Born the Mutants"

xpost
"Bunny Ain't No Kind Of Rider" is probably my favorite on the whole album, if there's a possible way I can say that.

I love the whole flow through, into and during She's A Rejector too..

this whole album sounds like music from Super Mario updated for 2007.
"faberge falls for shuggie" especially sounds like the dark, underwater levels colliding at 100 mph with the beginning levels that have mushrooms and tunnels and fun things to bounce on.
for the record i'd like to state that i like this album a lot alot, the dichotomy to me was (and still is) kind of staggering, though the back half is starting to open up to me a little bit.

a lot a lot*

it's like we weren't made for this world
Though I wouldn't really want to meet someone who was

Fuck, I love "the past is a grotesque animal" so much. And it doesn't feel too long for me at all, even at 12 minutes I can still put it on repeat a few times. I am really feeling the desperation in the lyrics, reverberates so much with my brain in its current state.

Not so sure on the rest just yet, Gronlandic Edit is good though.

"The Past is a grotesque animal" isn't long enough imo. I LOVE THAT SONG.

Also, the Super Mario comparisons. A bit of a stretch.

Speaking of their beloved epic (i.e., "The Past Is A Grotesque Animal"), have they been playing it or my other fave, "We Were Born The Mutants Again With Leafling" on zee road?

I have been to only one since-Hissing show and they played neither there and I'm just wondering if they've decided to include either in their most recent tours' set list(s) [and if anyone knows of an online repository of Of Montreal set lists, well, that'd be mos-appreciated, too].

(Not that their inclusion/omission's going to change the fact that I've already bought tickets for the fall and will be in attendance no matter what!)

Yeah, I know they play "The Past." Don't know about "Mutants."

Very cool. As mentioned above, I'd hoped they'd playing Hissing, front-to-back, in its entirety. When that didn't happen (they opened with the "first side" instead) my catch-all was either {even if I thought it'd have been very self-indulgent given its length and the seeming impatience of a majority of music fans} "The Past," or, selfishly, "Mutants" (neither of which appeared either...sigh).

STILL (and for the foreseeable future), the best show I've seen in years (your info, however, gives me a little extra something to look forward to).

I don't know if they play it every time, though!

Oh, I know. But I'm willing to "risk" it just the same.

And I never ever wanted to write this song. I always thought things would change somehow and that we'd start getting along BUT IT'S HOPELEEEEEEESSSSS!!!

No Conclusion is AMAZING!

just saw a trailer for "8: The Mormon Proposition" documentary, which was submitted to Sundance. The first half includes the instrumental from "The Past Is A Grotesque Animal"! I think Kevin Barnes would be proud...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MchC55BUzsk&feature=player_embedded

Weird, I was just listening to this album last night.

http://www.polyvinylrecords.com/shared/uploads/photos/03670_prc-203estore.jpg

http://www.polyvinylrecords.com/store/index.php?id=1184

Pre-Order of Montreal The Past Is A Grotesque Animal 12"+MP3

Over the years, we've gotten many requests from people wanting to hear "The Past Is A Grotesque Animal" at 45RPM so we decided to release this special 12" single.

It is limited edition of 500 on 180-gram light blue vinyl with a hand silk-screened jacket designed by Gemini Tactics (Nina Barnes).

It's going to sell out quickly, so if you've been wanting this be sure to order it now!

The A-side features the album version of the track from 2007's Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? The epic 12-minute song, which was honored at #168 on Pitchfork's Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s, is re-mastered by John Golden (Nirvana, Sonic Youth).

The B-side is a new version of "The Past Is A Grotesque Animal" recorded for the Spike Jonze short film "I'm Here", in which a fake robot band called The Lost Trees perform the song. The song was re-envisioned by of Montreal chief musician Kevin Barnes, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' guitarist Nick Zinner, and members of the Moonrats.

All pre-orders receive an instant MP3 download of both songs at checkout.

of Montreal The Past Is A Grotesque Animal 12"+Instant MP3 -- $8

That looks fun.. but I never really got what the big deal is with "Grotesque Animal." It's my least fav'rite on this record. But I guess people must love it!

yo sometimes i forget that "icons, abstract thee EP" is right there on this album's level

holy shit, Bryan Poole just uploaded this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UOjmrWY7rM

very cool. so I guess the Georgie Fruit stuff was a later addition. This is definitely a much darker/downcast tracklist.

On a side/related note, it's always bugged me that the 2xLP with the Icons tracks on Side 4 doesn't include "Miss Blonde, Your Papa Is Falling." Beautiful song.