We all know that there are musicians out
there, some of them extremely and, let’s be honest, inexplicably successful,
who are happy to trot out barely differing versions of the very same mundane
albums over and over again. At the opposite end of the spectrum there are the sometimes
less commercially successful artists who like to take a risk, to go out on a
limb even, to constantly entice and sometimes even challenge the boundaries of
music. of Montreal’s founder and frontman Kevin Barnes has pitched his very
brightly coloured tent firmly in this second camp. Kevin recently recalled the
very deliberate process of stripping back the layers to come up with their
swiftly written and briskly recorded new album, Lousy With Sylvianbriar.
Kevin told me that he went to San Francisco
around a month before he was due to start recording, where he spent three weeks
writing most of the material before returning to his home studio in Athens,
Georgia. There he gathered together an exciting group of new musicians, some of
whom he’d never even met before, and recorded the album in just two weeks to an
analogue 24-track tape machine. “It all happened in this really organic way’ Kevin
explained, ‘it could have been a disaster but it worked out really well.”
“The inspiration was definitely bands from
the late sixties and early seventies” Kevin continued, before quoting a list of
the albums that acted both as an inspiration for the back to basics recording
process and the overall theme. If I tell you that this list included Bring it All Back Home, Blonde on Blonde and
John Wesley Harding by Bob Dylan, American
Beauty and Workingman’s Dead by
Grateful Dead, Beggar’s Banquet and Let it Bleed by The Rolling Stones and
the solo recordings of Gram Parsons then you’ll get a very good idea of the
tradition in whose footsteps this album follows.
“I like the fact that you can’t hide behind anything
with analogue recording” Kevin continued,”you can feel the energy of the people
in the room. What appeals to me is the immediacy, you have to make quick decisions
that you have to live with.”
“So, with influences like that”, you’re
asking yourselves, “is it any good?”
If you’ve never heard of Montreal before then
this is a great place to start. And if you have heard them before then this is
every bit as good as, but very different to, their considerable previous body
of work.
To Kevin’s credit it is certainly an album
that succeeds in capturing the immediacy of the recording process. The influences
of Dylan, The Stones and Gram Parsons inform but don’t overshadow any of the
tunes here. Another of Kevin’s musical heroes, David Bowie is also strongly
felt and there are a number of tracks here of which David himself would be
extremely proud.
I’ve lived with this album for a few weeks
now and none of its charms are wearing off. My favourite track during week one
was ‘Belle Glade Missionaries’, which has such a nagging, lolloping hook that
it’s difficult not to be totally drawn to it. Week two saw the rise of
‘Raindrop in my skull’ a beautiful, largely acoustic number on which Kevin
shares vocal duties with Rebecca Cash to devastatingly tuneful effect. Week
three was the week when ‘Obsidian Currents’ stepped forward to volunteer for
the ‘top tune’ slot. It’s the last of these three that will undoubtedly be
regarded as Lousy With Sylvianbriar’s
finest tune once the dust finally settles.
Excitingly, for me at least if no-one else,
the album is released not only on the usual dull CD and mp3 formats, but also in
limited numbers on 180 gram sea glass green vinyl and, wait for it…, cassette
tape.
When the end of year ‘best of’ lists are written
I would love to think that Lousy with
Sylvianbriar will feature very prominently in many of them. It’ll certainly
be riding very high in mine.
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