lousy with sylvianbriar
Lousy with Sylvianbriar was created with a new songwriting approach, a different recording method, and a fresh group of musicians. Seeking creative inspiration, Kevin Barnes re-located to San Francisco where he spent days soaking in the strange surroundings and channeling the city's energy into his writing. After a very prolific period there, he returned to Athens, GA, and assembled the cast of musicians to begin the sessions. Barnes eschewed computer recording -- with its pitch correction, limitless effects plug-ins and editing possibilities -- and instead, with the help of engineer Drew Vandenberg (Deerhunter, Toro y Moi), he recorded Lousy with Sylvianbriar in his home studio on a 24-track tape machine. With no computer tricks to fall back on, the band -- Kevin Barnes (guitars,bass,vocals), Rebecca Cash (vocals), Clayton Rychlik (drums,vocals), Jojo Glidewell (keys), Bob Parins (pedal steel,bass), and Bennet Lewis (guitars,mandolin) -- could only get out of the recordings what they put into them. Most of the tracking was recorded live with the band in the same room together. They worked quickly, with the band members composing their parts on the fly and with little second guessing. The album was recorded in just three weeks. "I knew I wanted the process to be more in line with the way people used to make albums in the late 60s and early 70s," reveals Barnes. "I wanted to work fast and to maintain a high level of spontaneity and immediacy. I wanted the songs to be more lyric-driven, and for the instrumental arrangements to be understated and uncluttered.” Opening track and lead single "Fugitive Air" feels like a Stones-y anthem, with sparks of Philip K. Dick's psychedelic prose, Ralph Bakshi's cartoon violence, and William S. Burroughs' hyper-paranoia. "Belle Glade Missionaries" finds Barnes lyrically at his most political, backed by a soundtrack that is pure Dylan circa Highway 61 Revisited. Vocalist Rebecca Cash makes several appearances on the album, taking the lead on the plaintive "Raindrop in My Skull," where her and Barnes share a Gram Parsons/Emmylou Harris-inspired duet. "She Ain't Speakin' Now" ranks among of Montreal's all-time great songs, transforming its brooding acoustic guitar intro into a visceral angst-ridden rocker that sounds like the best moments of Neil Young & Crazy Horse. The album's closer, "Imbecile Rages," a caustic and doleful epitaph for a crumbling relationship, is one of Barnes' most raw and personal statements. Like the classic albums that inspired it, this is an album to be explored, to be lived with, to be listened to in happiness and in darkness, to be dissolved into. To be played very loudly at parties and with eyes closed, in headphones, alone. It should become dog-eared and dirty with use and it should lessen the blow of our enemies, in all their forms
After last year's tiresome Paralytic Stalks, Kevin Barnes regroups for what is arguably the best—not to mention the funniest, prickliest, most purple, and least fastidious—Of Montreal effort since 2007's *Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? *
The sprawling and prolific 16-year career of Kevin Barnes’ collaborative project Of Montreal begins to look like a discernible arc on Lousy With Sylvianbriar. Beginning in the late ’90s as an overlooked member of the Elephant 6 collective, the band initially dabbled in quirky twee-psych ditties before moving into…
Another frustrating but occasionally brilliant record from Kevin Barnes, as half-formed as it is dazzling.
of Montreal have been a million different entities, from a billion different angles in a trillion different dimensions.
Though Kevin Barnes had always used Of Montreal to build a strange, often beautiful world of complex personal thoughts and visions, their albums grew increasingly manic (musically and psychologically) throughout the mid-2000s.
Prolific glam-funk outfit of Montreal are giving us their twelfth studio album in Lousy With Sylvianbriar, an expectedly whimsical and seductive offering. Like much of the band’s back catalogue, the record mixes a pallette of styles, ranging from an indie quirkiness à la Spinto Band or early OK Go, to the honest vocal harmonies of The Beatles or Elliot Smith circa Figure 8, to a rockier, bass-led sound elsewhere.
Over the past decade, Of Montreal leader Kevin Barnes has explored futuristic realms of funked-up experimentalism, but Lousy with Sylvianbriar represents a deliberate about-face.
Kevin Barnes is clearly not a man for taking a break. Over the last 16 years, of Montreal's leading light has rattled off close to a record a year. And these are never just any old long-player; each is antithetical to its predecessor, a bleeding statement
Album review: Clash approves of the 12th studio album from Kevin Barnes' of Montreal, 'Lousy With Sylvianbriar'
Some bands seem just too massive to discuss critically in any reasonable way.
Review of“Lousy with Sylvianbriar”, the LP from 'of Montreal' comes out October 8th on Polyvinyl Records. The newest single is "Belle Glade Missionaries".