#10
Of Montreal
Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
No one would ever accuse Of Montreal principal songwriter/singer/bandleader Kevin Barnes of kowtowing to popular taste. After all, with cunningly conceived lyrics, cryptic song titles, stage shows that involve numerous costume changes and album covers that defy description, the creative force behind the Athens, Georgia collective has never been more unapologetically odd.
Yet, with Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, the group has taken a decisive step away from the absurdist indie psych-pop that characterized such earlier masterpieces as Satanic Panic in the Attic and Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse, and and trod further down the electro-glam-pop path hinted at by 2005’s The Sunlandic Twins. And while there’s an undeniable appeal to the wittily confessional lyrics and snappy drum machine programming of “Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse” and the equally brooding and propulsive “The Past Is a Grotesque Animal,” it’s more than a little disappointing to hear Barnes having created what is essentially a very good, but conventional (by Of Montreal standards, anyway) indie pop album.
As a result, Hissing Fauna comes across as deeply felt, artfully executed and highly listenable. But one can’t help but lament Of Montreal’s seeming abandonment of the brilliantly demented psychedelic pop that preceded it. As it stands, we hear only its faint whisper in one track—“Sink the Seine”—and, regrettably, that lasts all of one minute and change.
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