of Montreal - Paralytic Stalks

I guess it's time to throw in my 15 cents about this new of Montreal album, eh?

Last year sometime I was reading an interview with Kevin Barnes that had a fairly surprising amount of time praising the Sufjan Stevens album The Age of Adz. It was about how the album was so under-appreciated and in retrospect people would see it as one of the great works of our time. I was happy to see someone defending it so fiercely because I happened to agree strongly with his assessment. Adz was such a massive personal statement into which Stevens threw his whole being, a radical departure from all of his past "mainstream" releases.

It appears that Mr. Barnes was quite influenced by this great work. He seems to have decided to make his own personal version. So what we get here isn't as quite as radical a departure as the one Sufjan Stevens made, but that's only because of Montreal has never shied away from the outrageous/layered/layered/layered/A.D.D.-esque sounds that can be found on this album. But something has changed.

Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? was my favorite album of 2007, a year that included oh so many great albums (Battles, LCD Soundsystem, Okkervil River, Jens Lekman, Animal Collective, Jay-Z, M.I.A., and many others absolutely killed it that year). I had to venture into the world of Myspace to find this, but here is what I wrote about Hissing Fauna in my 2007 summary:

of montreal - hissing fauna, are you the destroyer?/icons, abstract thee
not only my favorite album of the year, but quite possibly my favorite album of the last FEW years. such happy, uplifting music about depressing subject matter. WE JUST WANT TO EMOTE 'TIL WE'RE DEAD. such a perfect opening line to the greatest album i have heard in a really long time. it makes me dance, shed a tear, think, scratch my head, laugh, all while singing along. and i never ever wanted to write this song...

The way that album combined dizzying highs and depressing lyrics moved me in ways I still find troubling. Since then, of Montreal's music has been disappointing me to a degree. The last couple albums just found Barnes reveling in his Georgie Fruit alter-ego, creating a strange fusion of of Montreal and Prince, getting all sorts of funky. Nothing wrong with any of that, it just didn't seem as personal a work, and it was near impossible to relate to it on a personal level.

This new one is different though. He has finally moved on. The lyrics hit the same levels of depression as Fauna, but the music now has a darkness to match. The way they are sung retains what Destroyer did, and once you've spun this a few times, if you're like me you will find yourself singing along with just as much emotion as on Hissing. It's just instead of singing about wanting to "shave your head, have a drink, and be left alone (is that too much to ask?)" it's more about how "somehow I lost the thread of being human, wrapped in all this bitterness."

It's a trip into the depths of Barnes' psyche, it's his most personal work since at least Hissing Fauna, and it's easily the darkest record they have put out. If you can take it, and if you can give it the time and attention it requires, I highly recommend it.