Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?

Genre rock Publisher Polyvinyl Records External Links Official Of Montreal Website Official Polyvinyl Records Website

I'm on vacation. Just thought I'd start off by saying that. It's a working vacation, since I have lots and lots of work to do while on vacation, but it started on a plane, so it's a vacation.

Anyways, I started listening to Of Montreal's thirteenth disc, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? when I walked into the tunnel that separates the terminal from the plane. Probably not the best idea. The first song, "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" begins with about a minute's worth of straight up decadence; the entire world starts falling apart, which only contributed to my growing fear of flying. The next track, "Suffer For Fashion," would probably be wonderful, if someone else was singing, and there was less keyboard, sort of a theme that runs through the entire album.

Remember Pokemon? Or any electronic video game music, for that matter? Well, "Sink The Seine" sort of sounds like that. The lyrics that stick out the most to me are "What has happened to you and I/And don't say that I have changed/Because man, of course I have," off of "Cato as a Pun," and "I"m in crisis/I need help/Come on mood, come switch back to good again...Come on chemicals!" off of "Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse." The former really only had the lyrics going for it, but the latter was an example of what Of Montreal does best: retro rock.

"Gronlandic Edit," is a sorry excuse of an attempt at a Scissor Sisters song. And while it makes me laugh when Of Montreal sings, "We're all physics' bitches," that doesn't change the fact that they couldn't hit a perfect falsetto, no matter how any times they tried. Of Montreal doesn't exactly mitigate the failure of their album with "A Sentence of Sorts in Kongvinger," but it does help. Here's some vintage Of Montreal, with fun eighties synth in the background.

Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? is a pseudo-concept album, since the songs seem to run together, but then again, the songs all sort of sound the same to begin with. There's also a chance that Of Montreal is now taking most of their influence from J-Pop, rather than The Beatles, The Smiths, and The Shins, which was so apparent on their previous albums. As opposed to the band's earlier material, like "Rapture Rapes The Muses," the same reliance on keyboards that separated The Smiths from reaching their potential on "A Rush and a Push and the Land is Ours,” is brought out again on here. There's nothing wrong with your guitars, boys, use 'em!