The electronic, disco-glam sound of Hissing Fauna was written, produced, performed and recorded almost entirely by the band's founder, frontman and brainchild, Kevin Barnes, with a sprinkle of glittery help from family and friends.
With the overwhelming presence of synthesizers, drum samples and seemingly endless vocal harmonies of the band's electro-pop sound, the album can sound like an overcooked '80s glamfest at first listen.
But with a good set of headphones or some very large speakers, the disco-fest turns into something completely different: a strange, psychadelic concept album about sex, fashion and depression.
Barnes has always been known for his quirky imagination and tales about weird, fantasy characters and events like those featured in the band's 1998 experimental storybook record, The Gay Parade, with songs about characters like Jacques Lamure, Nickee Coco and the Invisible Tree, and the Fun-Loving Nun.
The track titles for Hissing Fauna trend on this theme, but with a twist, like "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse" and "Faberge Falls for Shuggie". But aside from whatever was going on in Barnes' tortured head when he came up with the song titles, the lyrical content is personal and major shift from previous of Montreal albums that dealt with imagined conversations, fictional characters, ironic takes on loneliness and death, and corny love songs.
Barnes said Hissing Fauna tells the story of his transformation from Kevin Barnes -- taking place during the near-12 minute epic, "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" -- into his new alter-ego: the glitter-wearing, spandex-donning, black glam god, Georgie Fruit.
The first half of the album -- the Barnes half -- features the personal, emotional side of Barnes' struggle for himself, seen in "A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger," dealing with his seclusion and depression: "I spent the winter on the verge of a total breakdown while living in Norway/I felt the darkness of the black metal bands/But being such a fawn of a man I didn't burn down any old churches/Just slept way too much, just slept."
In "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse" Barnes asks his wife for help while escaping the grasp of his clinical depression: "Nina Twin is trying to help and I really hope that she suceeds/Though I picked the thorny path myself I'm afraid, afraid of where it leads/Chemicals don't strangle my pen/Chemicals don't make me sick again."
The album's opening track and most radio-friendly tune "Suffer for Fasion" is a catchy, poppy little tune, chalk-full of keyboards and Barnes' multiple harmonies that have given of Montreal its distinguished sound over recent years. Lyrically, Barnes is commenting on how overly concerned we are about fashion, about how, when we're all running frantically through the streets at the end of the world, we'll still be "checking our compact mirrors to make sure our lipstick isn't smeared and our hair is right."
After Barnes' glamformation at the album's purported "turning point", the remaining five songs start to sound less like of Montreal and a little more like a juiced-up version of Prince.
The following track, where Barnes finishes the rest of the album out as Georgie Fruit, "Bunny Ain't No Kind of Rider" is a lyrical shift from personal struggle to all things flamboyantly homoerotic -- art, drugs, makeup, fashion and sex -- seen in the first verse: "Saw her at Go kissing girls/What a shock I said you must be an artist/She muttered her reply/I was judging her friend as the DJ played a dead jam/No one wants to dance/They're outside smoking cigarettes."
Even Barnes' new live performance attitude is on the album -- wearing glitter and makeup, cross-dressing onstage -- seen in "Faberge Falls for Shuggie": "Those with the golden X have tried to tell me/That the sex in my walk was cotton soft but that's never, never, never."
"Labrynthian Pomp" is an instant attention-grabber dripping with Purple Rain. From Barnes' well-replicated Prince falsetto heard throughout the verses, right up until the song takes acid and becomes overwhelmingly psychadelic and eerie until it ends.
From start to finish, Hissing Fauna is drenched in sexuality, but a type of sexuality that has no gender and certainly no boundries. Barnes' unstable emotional cocoon opens up to a sex-crazed, cross-dressing, sparkly butterfly, and at no point is there a definition of how or why. It's as if it was meant to be.
But as odd and scary, or happy and gay of Montreal can sound, Kevin Barnes' band has managed to stay unpredictable and stay creative for 10 years.
And whether Barnes is himself or a split-personality fashionista, he and the rest of the Athens, Ga., group continue to evolve their style just enough to keep sounding new.
From University Chronicle, 1/25/07
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