Norwegian mood

>> Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes
finds his happy place on stage

by LORRAINE CARPENTER

In the land that produced raping and pillaging Norsemen in the eighth century, and church-burning, skull-fragment-ornamented death metal types in the 20th, it’s no wonder that people’s brain chemistry occasionally goes awry. Perhaps Norway’s long winters reminded Kevin Barnes of the romantic rejection he suffered here in la belle province years ago, inspiring the Athens, Georgia native to name his band Of Montreal. Whatever the trigger, something blew Barnes’s mind when he temporarily moved to Norway, and it’s documented on Of Montreal’s seventh album, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

Picking up where 2005’s The Sunlandic Twins left off, Hissing Fauna is an eruption of glittering pop and sassy electro-funk, hardly what you’d expect of someone suffering from depression. Yet, with all its sugary Abba rushes, Prince-inspired intoxicants and full-band blowouts (featuring guests from the Elephant 6 collective, of which Of Montreal is a part), the lyrics frankly address Barnes’s demons, and those of a black she-male called Georgie Fruit. The Mirror contacted Barnes for clues about this and other mysteries surrounding Of Montreal, including the contents of their theatrical live show, made possible by sacrificing a song to Outback Steakhouse commercials!

Mirror: What can you tell me about the new live show? I hear it’s a little hush-hush.

Kevin Barnes: Yeah, I don’t wanna give away too much, but there’s a moment where the environment shifts dramatically and something kind of drastic happens on stage. Everyone gets their cameras out.

M: “Sexualien” was the theme on the last tour. What’s up this time around?

KB: It’s liberation music. We want to create an environment where people can fulfill any twisted, weird fantasy they might have. When they come to the show, they can dress any way they want and be any kind of person that they wanna be. We kind of do that ourselves on stage.

M: I’m curious about Georgie Fruit.

KB: That sprung out of this more introspective period that I was going through as a songwriter. I got bored with writing about my personal life and I wanted to filter it through a different persona, so I created this completely different character. He’s in his 50s, he’s gone through a couple of sex changes, he went to prison, he’s done all these things that I’ve never done, but that I can imagine having experienced. I picture him as this guy who was really involved in the freak-funk music scene in the mid- to late-’70s. He was in a band called Arousal. They weren’t very successful, but they were very cool. Then he kind of got lost in the ’80s and ’90s, and now no one really knows where he is, but he’s still going strong. Writing songs from his perspective, I feel I’m able to explore parts of my personality that I might not feel comfortable with otherwise. It kind of gives me a shield to protect myself.

M: Did working on this record help you out of your depression?

KB: I was going through such a heavy period that nothing aside from chemical therapy was gonna make a difference. But it helps to have an artistic outlet because you’re able to transform this ugly experience into something that other people can connect with, and you also benefit because you’re analyzing your experiences and motivations in a way that’s relatively positive.

With Grand Buffet at la Tulipe on
Monday, March 12, 9 p.m., $17.50