Into The Music
Kevin Barnes has been making of Montreal records for almost thirty years, and he still hasn’t run out of ideas. That’s partly a function of volume, of Montreal operates more like a one-person studio project with live collaborators than a traditional band, and Barnes has never been shy about releasing music when it’s ready rather than waiting for the right moment. But it’s also genuinely a function of curiosity. Barnes sounds interested in what he’s doing, album after album, even when those albums share almost no sonic DNA with each other.
Aethermead, the band’s forthcoming record due June 5 on Polyvinyl, was made under particular circumstances. Barnes relocated from Vermont to Brooklyn, newly single, newly urban, recording with engineer Drew Vandenberg and the same core live crew that has been with him for years. The press release is unusually candid. “I’ve always had a romantic fascination with New York,” Barnes said, “but for forever I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. The timing was perfect this time around.”
The first single, “When,” is a song about wanting more than you can ask for directly. Barnes frames it as sexual longing, then immediately undercuts that reading. “It’s much easier to say ‘When can I fuck you again?’ than it is to say ‘When will you be loving, affectionate, and emotionally generous and make me feel whole again?'” That’s a very Kevin Barnes move. The bravado is right there on the surface; the vulnerability is impossible to miss underneath it.
of Montreal’s catalog is one of the stranger and more interesting bodies of work in indie rock. The band started in the late 90s as part of the Elephant 6 collective, doing lush chamber pop with a slightly melancholy English influence. Then Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? arrived in 2007 and changed everything, a densely psychedelic funk-influenced record that documented a breakdown in real time and made Barnes a cult figure. Everything since has been various kinds of experiment, glam and disco and synth-pop and noise, none of it exactly what preceded it.
The Sunlandic Twins, reissued last year for its 20th anniversary, still sounds like nothing else from its era. Paralytic Stalks, the 2012 double album, remains one of the most ambitious and frustrating things Barnes has made. Lady on the Cusp, the 2024 record, was looser and warmer and maybe easier to live with than anything in years.
Aethermead sounds, based on “When,” like Barnes in a familiar but focused mode. New city, clear context, a record that knows what it’s about. That’s not always the case with of Montreal. When it is, the results tend to be memorable. This one is worth watching.