Let's Do Some Drugs!

On this their eighth album, it’s time for Of Montreal to get funkified. And with a name like Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? it has to be good. While their lyrics can be either cryptic, straightforward, or downright bizarre, compelling poetics and Kevin Barnes, the main dude, are no strange bedfellows. And what would one expect, with such mind-affectingly compelling influences as drug use and fucked up relationships?

As an Of Montreal album, Hissing Fauna ropes us in, as ever, with the booginess and catchiness that is the band’s sound, characteristics that send the listener to a happy place where dance parties abound. However, this joy comes not without its price, for upon closer listen, the lyrics are sad, shocking, disturbing, and a strange contrast from the mood you just thought you had been encouraged toward. One soon finds themselves, toe tapping all the while, in a world of depressing self-loathing (because sometimes kids, self-loathing can be quite the time!), obsession with past mistakes, and general shittiness. Amazingly, at any given point the words may be saying “Life is fucking fucked up,” while the tunes say “Let’s get funky.” This leaves you with a strange sort of optimism despite the fact that you’ve just listened to a troubled soul both dramatically and poignantly pour his heart out.

The first track “Suffer for Fashion” certainly meets this description. The album opens with an immediately catchy glam jam that also manages to be a downer. While the cooing baby “Laa laa laas” asks us to remember the innocence of childhood, Barnes quickly turns up the pace of life and throws the audience speeding through middle-aged turmoil. This song could be loads of fun on the psychedelic dance floor, but doesn’t so much back that up theme-wise with inspirational words. Barnes sends out wailing calls of action, backed by snappy violins zings and high keyboard bangings. The man-made Xanadu dance sounds combined with his layered wailing seems to be a cry for help, or to join him in action. “Let’s go along a journey kids, let’s listen to my very personal, very introspective album.”

We go even further with “Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse,” which my God is catchy. My foot shakes furiously each and every time I have a listen. The opening sounds sort of like that of the beloved classic “Barbie Girl,” and it seems like we might be going on a delightful romp through Happytimeville, but we will soon be beaten down and away from these ill-informed notions. For a while the song conjures up the image of a carefree frolic on the mountains of a sunny afternoon, or a gay romp on a summer’s day, until those pesky lyrics remind us of the plights of the world. But then our dear friend “chemicals” comes barging in, and we don’t really know what to make of him. Drug fueled trips though fun and flighty lands can be an escape from one’s own mind, or the use of chemicals can be a delving even further into it. “Though I picked the thorny path myself, I’m afraid, afraid of where it leads” While our carefree world has been created through the mood that this song conveys, and we are reveling in it, Barnes is right there to question our enjoyment of such moments. Is the use of chemicals something that serves as an escape, so that we may create for ourselves a bit of time in this world that we may enjoy, or does the use of dangerous drugs actually send the mind further out into the journeys of madness? Barnes would seem to claim the former as he asserts “cause my own inner cosmology has become too dense to navigate.” We’re given a straightforward picture or idea of the strange trips this man has been going on, but personally are having the time of our lives on the dance floor.

With the songs on Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer? Of Montreal creates beats and sounds that are engaging and joyful, while at the same time discussing topics that are somber, self-concerned, drug-fueled, and hideously depressing. Are we to come way after a listen feeling that all pursuits are hopelessly tainted by the pain of the past, the only lessons of which give us a grand fear in facing the present and future? Perhaps the high state that our spirits are kept in musically serves as the very “chemical” that will allow us to go on. The feelings are there and out in the open, but we can’t despite ourselves wretch away from the good-time parts. Those are the drugs in our life that serve as hope, are hope, and give us a reason to keep on going. Therefore, this is a good album.

Oh, the here’s the best line ever “Physics makes us solids bitches” (or is it “Physics makes us all its bitches?”).