Music

Of Montreal

by Jack Michaelson

When locales become band names, one might reasonably expect some sort of connection between place and act. Say, Boston. They were from Boston. Or Chicago, ditto. Asia, as everyone knows, first gigged in a yurt near Ulan Bataar. How, then, does one reconcile such a pattern with of Montreal?

These Athens, GA kids--Kevin Barnes, Dottie Alexander, Derek Almstead, Andy Gonzales and Jamey Huggins--have as much to do with Montreal as Nutella does with a Thousand-Year Egg. No singing in French, no oblique references to Guy LaFleur, no Labatt's, no well-worn national insecurity. Just sunny, psychedelic, distinctly American pop--it appears that our template must be discarded. But what's even more unusual than the marked absence of Canadianism is the absence of their hometown's ubiquitous influence.

"That '80s Athens sound really hasn't influenced us too much," Lead Singer/Lyricist Kevin Barnes said. "Those bands created a scene that was conducive to D.I.Y, and they laid the groundwork. We all love early R.E.M, but it isn't our principal influence. We're really into '60s pop--The Beatles, The Kinks, The Who, The Stones--and newer acts like Os Mutantes."

Not to mention Can, Mingus, Coltrane--the list is long and diverse, but common throughout is a sense of musical possibility and experimentation, the importance of which is easy to hear in of Montreal's recorded work. Their most recent release, Aldhils Arboretum, is a melange of jangle and space. Barnes' strained but emotive voice expresses inner weirdnesses over plump, three-minute slices of sun and flower. The "alterna-pop" label is slapped on many a gang of lugubrious plodders but only truly fits surreal, warm music such as this. Songs with such titles as "An Ode to the Nocturnal Muse," and "Old People in the Cemetery" are wallflowers, hiding in the background of your mind until you realize what Brian Wilson must have been thinking when Eugene Landy made him spend all day in the indoor sandbox. This is truly trippy stuff, no blotter necessary.

But it's not music to spin in circles by. Of Montreal crafts tiny pleasant sound parcels, attempting to achieve a kind of falling-apart-perfectly-together balance. For the most part, they succeed. It doesn't hurt that they all like each other enough to live together.

It's pretty cool," Barnes said of the farmhouse he shares with his bandmates. "We have a recording studio in the house. It's lots easier to schedule things when you have the same home base--when you're working on ideas late at night, it works out well. We're not always at each other's throats. But it does add a bit more stress, with the silly responsibilities (of being roommates)."

But it's not all strumming and tweaking. The folks in of Montreal explore a variety of creative pursuits.

"The music is definitely our focus," Barnes said. "But Andy is also a painter, Derek does mastering, Jamey is into graphic arts. I do write absurd poetry, short stories, nothing too seriously."

Nothing about of Montreal is too serious. This is a band that wrote a song about a spider who discovered a lake on his tongue, drowned in it, and, following a tasteful ceremony, was reincarnated. Precious though they may sound, Barnes' lyrics veer close to the clashing rocks of inanity without ever driving that pastel Beetle over the cliff. He can be plaintive and heartfelt as well as quirky and goofy. Or all at once. This music is celebration of the strangeness and beauty of regular life, filtered backward through a fisheye. And don't think for a moment that they'll pull a Stone Roses and wait to release their next album when you're 73.

"Right now, we're focusing on promoting the record and this tour," Barnes said. "But we're doing our first European tour in January, and I do have another record's worth of material written. We'll try to record it around this time next year."

We will all, in our big pink sunglasses and frayed hip-huggers, be waiting.

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