Barnes, ca. 1996

Since moving to the college town of Athens, Georgia, 20 years ago, of Montreal frontman Kevin Barnes has made a name for himself as possibly one of the most enigmatic and kaleidoscopic songwriters of all time. Naming his band after a failed long distance relationship, Barnes’s nearly two decade career as the frontman of the band of Montreal has spawned thirteen studio albums, thirty EPs and singles, and ten compilation albums. He has cited an eclectic array of influences, ranging from the Kinks to David Bowie, Os Mutantes to Prince, and most recently, Bob Dylan to Television and the Talking Heads. Barnes’s intuitive innovations in DIY recording technique have had a groundbreaking effect on alternative music, paving the way for such well known indie artists such as Animal Collective, MGMT, and Starfucker. Since the release of Cherry Peel in 1997, his devout cult following has witnessed Barnes’s perpetual bipolar metamorphosis from a naïve young songwriter, to an escapist poet, to a troubled fledgling husband and father, to a genderbending ex-con African American funk musician in their late 40’s, and finally into a well established, but mentally unstable composer, producer, and engineer. It brings the question, how exactly does the turbulent and colorful life of one man translate into the prolific and eclectic genius that is of Montreal?

A self proclaimed “intellectual late bloomer”, Kevin Barnes ended up moving to music mecca Athens, Georgia pursue a career in music, the only thing that he knew how to do. There he ended up befriending and rooming with frontmen from the 1960’s psychedelic influenced Brian Wilson worshipping Elephant 6 Collective, consisting of such popular Indie Rock groups as Neutral Milk Hotel, Apples in Stereo, and Olivia Tremor Control. The Elephant 6 collective was a loosely affiliated group of musicians who resided in Athens during the mid to late 90’s who pioneered intuitive DIY recording techniques in the genres of both Indie Rock and Musique Concrète. Kevin met Derek Almestead and Brian Poole in the summer of 1996, both of whom were in awe of the cassette tape of Four track recordings recorded the previous year. They would proceed to record the confessionally lyriced Cherry Peel, which was released in 1997, according to Poole was recorded primarily with Smule SM57 Microphones on a Tascam Portastudio on 1/4 Tape. The album, though now acclaimed by critics, was harshly panned soon after it’s release. The following year, he recorded a much more whimsical but darker and vaguely jazz influenced opus; The Bedside Drama: A Petite Tragedy, as Jeff Stratton of the Boward Palm Beach New Times put it, “a virtual role-play of Barnes’ Canadian heart-shatter”. The story of the Canadienne heartbreak was preceded by two songs that will foreshadow Barnes’s near future as a escapist storyteller to cope with his newfound celibacy that lasted throughout his 20’s. Like many Elephant 6 albums, such as the world famous “In The Aeroplane Over the Sea” by Neutral Milk Hotel, “The Bedside Drama” was mostly a solo effort, with small contributions from bandmates and other Elephant 6 musicians.

Waiting on the Weather, from the Early Four-Track Recordings (Recorded ca. 1995, released 2001)

Don’t Ask Me to Explain – Cherry Peel (1997)

Someone Who Just Lost Something of Importance – The Bedside Drama: A Petite Tragedy (1998)

With the departure of Bryan Poole to focus his energy on the Elephant 6 band Elf Power soon after the start of the recording sessions of “The Gay Parade” (1999), Barnes enlisted multi instrumentalists Dottie Alexander, Jamey Huggins, and Andy Gonzales, who contributed to the first major change of musical sound for the band. “The Gay Parade” is described by the website allmusic.com as “the Sgt. Pepper of Indie Rock”. It was the first of three albums that would consist entirely of lyrics that were short stories about fantastic and surreal characters, predominantly influenced by Rold Dahl and vaudevillian humor. Barnes cites that these emotionally withdrawn and childish lyrics were escapist tactics to cope with Barnes’s longtime celibacy throughout his 20’s. It was the first of Montreal album to employ experimental DIY recording techniques, such as using household items as instruments, something that came very easy to the band, since they lived together in a house in the country until 2003. Unlike “The Bedside Drama” before it, “The Gay Parade” and the two subsequent albums, “Coquelicot Asleep In the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse” (2001), and Aldhils Aboretum (2002) were recorded collaboratively as a band, with contributions from many other Elephant 6 musicians, most notably Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel. The ever evolving sound of of Montreal during the “Gay Parade” and “Coquelicot” recording sessions (1998-2000) not only consisted of a 1960’s inspired psychedelic pop influence, but also a vaudevillian George Gershwin and Cole Porter influence. These influences would also leak into their live performances, which consisted of surreal comedy interludes between songs curated by David Barnes, Kevin’s artist brother.

Fun Loving Nun – The Gay Parade (1999)

A Dreamy Day Daydreaming of You – Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse (2001)

The Events Leading Up to the Collapse of Detective Dulllight, a surrealist poem.

Despite being a phenomenal record, the recording of the heavily Beatles influenced “Aldhils” was problematic. Both Andy Gonzales and Derek Almestead wanted more creative control over arrangements of the songs. This is most evident stylistically with the bass solo in track 12 of Aldhils, “Kissing in the Grass”. This, according to the documentary The Past is a Grotesque Animal (2013), led to the first of many instances of personal conflict within the band, leading to the less than amicable departure of Almestead and Gonzales. These events would have a profound effect on Barnes’s songwriting and recording processes, as well as set the stage for his personal problems for years to come. The lyrics of Aldhils also reflected Barnes’s emerging clinical depression. Kevin, in an interview with Glorious Noise in 2004 stated that “I was having a hard time just feeling good in the world, just feeling pessimistic, jaded. But then I fell in love, and everything changed.”

Kissing in The Grass – Aldhils Arboretum (2002); note Derek Almestead’s bass contribution.

Kevin met Norwegian artist Nina Grøttland “at a Swedish festival, discussing Story of the Eye” (lyrics from The Past is A Grotesque Animal, 2007) in 2001, forging a long distance relationship that resulted in their marriage in 2003. Barnes’s relationship with Nina changed his songwriting style beyond the love songs he was writing for her, and the explicitly personal lyrics he would write about her later on in his career. Grøttland’s love of literature, film, and art rubbed off on Barnes, and his lyrics reached a new level of sophistication. Barnes took this creative opportunity and the personal scrutiny between him and his bandmates to move out of their communal house in the country and into a new house in Athens, where he used the spare bedroom to build his own personal studio. He immediately began work on his next opus, “Satanic Panic in the Attic” (2004), on his own, completely from scratch, using the digital audio workstation Cubase slaved to Propellerhead’s Reason, for the first time ever, programming soft synths and sequencing drums. Though there were few contributions from friends of his, this was Barnes’s first true solo effort. In Satanic Panic, Barnes for the most part kept his Beatlesque pop ethos (Will You Come and Fetch Me, My British Tour Diary) and surrealistic storytelling (Erroneous Escape of Eric Eckles, Chrissie Kiss the Corpse), but also incorporated some personal lyrics about his unconditional love for Nina (Lysergic Bliss, Climb the Ladder, Your Magic is Working), as well as taking a brand new influence from New Wave, Afrobeat, Funk, and Electronica, something very new for Barnes as he and the other Elephant 6 musicians years prior believed that the period of time after the early 1970’s was the nadir of music. Barnes’s new style of incorporating electronic elements to indie rock was groundbreaking, paving the way for most notably MGMT and Ariel Pink, arguably making Satanic Panic in the Attic one of the most influential albums of it’s time. Like most of of Montreal’s albums, Satanic Panic in the Attic screams to be explored in its entirety. Some of the highlights, include the use of the Korg Univox, an early synthesizer from the 1970’s heard in Rapture Rapes the Muses and Climb the Ladder, and the virtuosic variation of guitar effects on Kevin’s vintage Gibson SG, using a Vox AC15 amplifier and various tremolos and phasers in Spike the Senses, .

Satanic Panic in the Attic (2004), Personal note: this album strikes a chord with me as it set the tone for two serious relationships in my life, one of which was punctuated by two visits to Marietta, Georgia, an hour and a half’s drive away from Kevin’s town of Athens.

The success of Satanic Panic in the Attic allowed for Kevin to reorganize his band for his upcoming tour, adding his wife Nina on bass and reenlisting Bryan Poole, now using the stage name The Late B.P. Helium. Halfway through the tour, Nina fell ill; or so she thought. The life of Kevin Barnes was about to change. Nina was pregnant. Lacking health insurance, the couple relocated to Nina’s hometown of Oslo, Norway, where they had their daughter, Alabee. The anticipation and unpreparedness of being a new father and the homesickness of being away in Oslo drove Kevin to the brink of insanity, resulting in suicidal depression and daily panic attacks. While in Norway, Barnes wrote “The Sunlandic Twins” (2005), and early parts of “Hissing Fauna, Are You the Distroyer”, using mostly a midi keyboard, programming beats with Reason, his guitar, and a Beyerdynamic M88 Microphone, all arranged using Cubase. The result was his most successful endeavor to date. The Sunlandic Twins (2005) incorporated more electronic and dance influence than ever, yet still theoretically had a 1960’s psychedelic and 1970’s glam ethos. The bouncy, disco influenced, bass driven song “Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games” is to this day of Montreal’s most popular song.

The resulting tour, who’s performances ended up being very influenced by glam rock, began upping the ante by utilizing androgynous fashions and more dancey, upbeat music, which Kevin cites was an escape from the harsh realties of adulthood. Unfortunately, Barnes’s mental health continued to decline amidst this newfound commercial success.

Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games – The Sunlandic Twins (2005)

“My career was doing better than ever, but my personal life was shit”, lamented Barnes in the documentary “The Past is a Grotesque Animal”. As Kevin continued to lose his mind being unable to handle fatherhood, he and Nina split up, and Nina found herself on a plane back to Norway with Alabee. Out of the ashes of Barnes’s failed marriage, came 2007’s “Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?”. For the third time in a row, this album was their most successful to date. Most of the first half of that album had been written and recorded during Barnes’s time in Norway. Describing his struggles with his mental health and begging for some sort of easy salvation, as heard in Heimdalsgate as a Promethean Curse and Gronlandic Edit. However, the turning point of the album, the song “The Past is a Grotesque Animal”, describes Kevin’s side of the story of his split with Nina in explicit detail. Once Barnes found the right combination of medication early on in 2006, visited Nina and Alabee in Oslo, finally finding joy in fatherhood, and worked things out with Nina. The family returned home and Kevin was able to finish Hissing Fauna. The latter half of Hissing Fauna, is told through an invented onstage persona of Kevin’s imagination, Georgie Fruit, an aging Black genderbending funk musician who is impervious to being emotionally hurt mixing the autobiographical and the fantastical in order to lift Kevin’s spirits. Stylistically, the latter half of Hissing Fauna is more influenced by R&B and Soul than any other work by Kevin, and once again represents a change in the band’s style, this time, halfway through the album.

The Past is A Grotesque Animal – Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer (2007)

The medication and Georgie Fruit character also unlocked some sort of a latent hypersexuality stemming from his prior celibacy. 2008’s Skeletal Lamping is a sexually devious romp told through several personas, especially Georgie Fruit. The different influences on this album are too numerous to list, and range from the likings of Sly and The Family Stone to Burt Bacharach and Belle and Sebastian. The album as a concept featured numerous small movements strung together electronically in 15 songs. There was not much room for stylistic or lyrical development, as this album was a followup to 2007’s Hissing Fauna. The combined success of Hissing Fauna and Skeletal Lamping, however managed to make the 2008-2009 Skeletal Lamping tour more outlandish and over the top than ever before, and set the scene for projecting the surreal minds of not only Kevin Barnes, but also that of his wife Nina, and his brother David.

Id Engager – Skeletal Lamping (2008), a song about the disparities of casual sex.

St. Exquisites Confessions – Live during the 2008 Tour. – Thanks to the increased budget, Kevin was able to ride onstage naked on a horse, just like Prince!

The popularity of Skeletal Lamping attracted some big names to of Montreal’s fanbase and collaborators. Actress Susan Serandon, a long time fan of of Montreal, during the 2008 tour appeared on stage and spanked David while using Kevin as an armchair. The emerging R&B and Soul influence attracted pop singers Solange Knowles and Jaenelle Monae to collaborate with of Montreal on their next record, False Priest. By the time False Priest was almost finished, producer Jon Brion, known for his production and arrangement work for Kanye West and Spoon, approached Barnes to collaborate. Though Brion’s expertise improved the production value greatly improved the fidelity of the record, the heavily R&B and synth-funk influenced tunes with traditional pop structures did not go over well with old fans and critics alike. This reaction to False Priest did not go over well with Barnes, and with the commercial failure of the follow up EP to False Priest, “the Controllersphere” (2011), along with a string of interpersonal issues, marital woes, and the much less than amicable departure of long time bandmate James Husband, Barnes once again fell into a depression.

Hydra Fancies – False Priest (2010)

Sex Karma – False Priest feat. Solange Knowles (2010)

Disappointed with False Priest’s reception, Barnes set out to write a less than accessible album that showed the other side of his cyclical depression. Influenced mainly by avant garde 20th century classical music and Sufjan Stephens, Paralytic Stalks is of Montreal’s most morose album by far. Despite this, it was a huge turning point for Barnes as a composer and a producer, as many of the songs in the album used 20 to 30 instruments, many of them meant for classical music, with the help of musician Kishi Bashi. A huge cry for help amidst his pressing personal problems. With many people joining and leaving the band, conflict brewed, and Kevin set out to do something new. Inspired by Sylvia Plath, Barnes packed his bags and spent a few weeks living in an apartment on Delores Street in San Francisco as an opportunity to isolate himself and come up with a completely new sound.

Dour Percentage – Paralytic Stalks (2012)

Dolores Street Rate, an unreleased demo from Barnes’s time in San Francisco describing his experiences.

Originally, the resulting project from Barnes’s trip to San Francisco was intended to be a side project, as there was too much baggage surrounding of Montreal. He hoped that having a change of scenery would inspire him to make something new and exciting that only he could make. Living in San Francisco brought psychedelic folk and americana influence into his field of work. After writing the material, he enlisted the aid of local Athens musicians, along with two previous members (who were previously newer additions to the band) who were more versed in americana and folk to record 2013’s Lousy With Sylvianbriar. When he decided to release Lousy With Sylvianbriar as of Montreal, he had to explain to Dottie Alexander and Bryan Poole, longtime members of of Montreal, that he would be continuing on without them. As disappointing as this may sound on a personal level, the new lineup and the new music brought the band some sort of a renaissance, as Lousy With Sylvianbriar rejuvenated the group and brought it back to life. Influences from Bob Dylan are heard in Belle Glade Missionaries, an early David Bowie influence, rather than the Stardust era Bowie that had inspired Barnes in the past, can be heard in Obsidian Currents, and influence from San Francisco sweethearts the Grateful Dead can be heard in the political anthem Heigra Émigré. For the first time in his entire career, Barnes infused his politics with his music.

Obsidian Currents – Lousy With Sylvianbriar (2013)

Belle Glade Missionaries – Lousy With Sylvianbriar (2013)

A couple of months after the release of Lousy With Sylvianbriar, Kevin and Nina once again split up, and Rebecca Cash left of Montreal. Naturally, the explicit details of this aren’t known by the general public, but when tragedy strikes Kevin Barnes is always there to make great art. As he said in the song Spiteful Intervention in 2012’s Paralytic Stalks, “it’s fucking sad that we need a tragedy to occur to gain a fresh perspective in our lives”. Barnes would spend the next few months writing and perfecting 2015’s Aureate Gloom, a 70’s CBGB-era New York influenced album, again with hyper confessional lyrics that dissects Kevin’s personal life and struggles with mental health at excruciating detail, is again providing us with a new and fresh sound.

Virgilian Lots – Aureate Gloom (2015)

In an interview mere months ago, Kevin was asked: “Do you feel as if you are of Montreal?”

His answer: “Yes, definitely.”

Kevin Barnes’s music and lyrics spanning his entire career as of Montreal and the many iterations of the group both as a recording artist and a group of performing artists, point to one thing: Kevin is a manic genius who, as his former bandmate James Huggins would put it, “Is making a desperate plea for his own sanity”. With artistic genius, and generally being all over the map, comes great personal flaw. On numerous occasions he has demonstrated that he puts art before his personal relationships, though it is clear that this attitude has evolved over time as his naïvety faded away as the new millennium unfolded. Above all, Kevin and those who he has performed with over the years has touched thousands of hearts in many different ways, including my own. I believe that is beyond virtuous.

Works Cited

King, R. (2004, April 28). Of Montreal: Changing Your Month. Retrieved May 6, 2015, from http://gloriousnoise.com/2004/of_montreal_changing_your_mont

The past is a grotesque animal [Motion picture]. (2013).

Stratton, J. (2002, October 17). Wayward Son. West Palm Beach New Times. Retrieved May 6, 2015, from http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/music/wayward-son-6322104

Various. (n.d.). Interview archive. Retrieved May 6, 2015, from http://theofmontrealinterviewarchive.blogspot.com/