Of Montreal
Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
on Polyvinyl RecordsA-

"Oh, why of course you can."

That's what Of Montreal's Kevin Barnes might say, shyly and slyly, to that rock 'n' roll litmus test: "But can you dance to it?" On the band's eigth and latest album, Barnes extends the sea change he began with 2004's Satanic Panic in The Attic--which was recorded mostly solo, and consolidated into digestibly bizarre pop songs the shambolic flourishes of the band's early neopsychedelia--to its best and fullest realization.

Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? is also a concept album and not the first by this Elephant 6 band. The plot is simple: In a sort of cacaphonous haze of frigid, Scandinavian weather, smeared makeup and psychotropic drugs, Barnes transforms into the glam rocker Georgie Fruit, who, like Ziggy Stardust and Maxwell Demon before him, might be even more self-destructive following a spiritual rebirth. Truthfully, Barnes recorded the album in Athens, Ga. and Oslo while battling depression and anxiety, and his tenure in the latter city culminated in his separation from his wife.

In Georgie Fruit is Hissing Fauna's essential dichotomy: Waxing personal while playing a part, Barnes meditates on insanity with the steadiness of a master popsmith's hand. So did David Bowie and Marc Bolan, who also parlayed early semi-success in psychedelia into arena-scale adulation. Of Montreal won't headline Budokan anytime soon, but the progression from wide-eyed psych to infectious dance-floor bliss is unmistakeable.

Speaking of transitions, Barnes does just that on "The Past is a Grotesque Animal," the 12-minute behemoth at Hissing Fauna's center. He becomes Georgie Fruit here, his stream-of-consciousness ravings jerking manically from surreal to solipsistic. "We want our film to beautiful, not realistic," he sings, suggesting that for Georgie Fruit, glamour is a bandage to mask far uglier traits. While Barnes' rant is untempered, his music is not. The song is grueling, chorusless hyperdisco, building tension but offering neither climax nor release, and it is meticulously wrought. That's glam rock at its best: pop precision with a violent underbelly.

The rest of Hissing Fauna finds Barnes exploring dance music in almost all its permutations, mixing in healthy doses of the British Invasion, as he has always done. An opening three-song medley begins with "Suffer for Fashion," in which he sings: "We've got to keep our little clique clicking at 130 bpm it's not too slow / If we've got to burn out let's do it together," before erupting into a maniacal chorus: "Forever!" Also on Hissing Fauna's first half, there are moments of paranoia ("Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse"), wintertime isolation as therapy ("A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger") and philosophical crisis ("Cato as a Pun"), all to the sounds of Barnes' ebullient and idiosyncratic pop.

The album's second, "post-transformation" half is mostly party music, songs about discos and "soul power" and Shuggie Otis. The best is "She's a Rejector," an instantly memorable piece of disco-punk in which Barnes (or Fruit?) laments a house-party blow-off: "There's the girl that left me bitter / Want to pay some other girl to just walk up to her and hit her." His conclusion? "But I can't! I can't! I can't! I can't!" Of Montreal hasn't made music this gloriously banal in years, and it's a delight that's not at all out of place here.

In fact, murky concept notwithstanding, all of Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? is a treat, one that fans of Satanic Panic and 2005's The Sunlandic Twins will cherish. Nothing here equals the latter record's "So Begins Our Alabee"-there are few better examples of electronic psychedelia--and that's O.K.. Elephant 6ers like The Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel took unchecked creativity so far left of pop music that they never truly came back--even though the results were iconic. On albums like Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies, Barnes almost spun off into the ether himself. It's now been three albums since he tightened the reigns, and the results remain glorious.

-Jonathan Fischer

The Shins
Wincing the Night Away
on Sub Pop Records

B-

From the first track of Wincing the Night Way, it's evident this isn't really a Shins album. Sure, The Shins wrote the songs and James Mercer sings on all the tracks, but the album is less idiosyncratic and insular than the Alberquerque band's previous two albums. For Nada Surf or Matt Pond PA, Wincing the Night Away would be a triumph. For The Shins, it's a rather average addition to their much-revered discography.

Given the single, "Phantom Limb," and certain live recordings circulating the Internet, Wincing the Night Away was shaping up to be a worthy addition to The Shins' oeuvre. An early recording of "Girl Sailor" has available online for at least a year, enticing bloggers and fans with its Chutes Too Narrow-like melodies and lyrics.

But early reviews of the new album were less enthusiastic. Some critics commended The Shins for making a small, laid-back album, resisting the temptation to make an ambitious and grandiose epic that might have fallen flat. It's true that hopes for the third Shins album were inordinately high. It's also true that Wincing the Night Away doesn't begin to fulfill those expectations. The album comes off like second-rate, Shins-inspired indie pop rather unlike the sweet, introspective lullabies of Oh, Inverted World! or the more active quirks of Chutes Too Narrow.

What most disappointed me was its lack of a long dreamy outre. Oh, Inverted World! and Chutes Too Narrow rocked the listener to sleep with final tracks almost twice as long as their other songs. Wincing the Night Away just ends: quietly, but without purpose, like a Shins mixtape--not an album.

All of this is not to say that Wincing the Night Away is a bad album. For most bands, it would bethe jewel in the proverbial crown. From The Shins, however, one expects more.



-Andrea Fineman