Kevin Barnes is a master shapeshifter—someone who’s been making weird, provocative, frustrating, fascinating music for so long, people have started to take that fact for granted. Most artists contain multitudes, sure, but how many of them have back catalogs with both cheeky funk and proggy glam? Both characters and confessionals? Collaborations with both indie heroes (the broader Elephant 6 collective) and massive pop stars (Janelle Monáe)?
The joy—and, for perhaps the casual fan, trepidation—of a new of Montreal album is not knowing which Barnes you might encounter. Some people pine for the mid-2000s era, arguably the band’s peak of influence, where bass-heavy, harmony-stacked ear-worms (“Gronlandic Edit,” “So Begins Our Alabee”) flowed in abundance. Others crave the more challenging, genre-splicing experiments that have dotted their discography in the subsequent decades. Recent of Montreal albums have offered a bit of everything: 2020’s UR FUN was forty minutes of, relatively speaking, compact and accessible synth-pop; 2022’s Freewave Lucifer F<ck F^ck F>ck, as the title may suggest, was more winding and dizzying; and 2024’s Lady on the Cusp fell somewhere in between. Now we have the band’s 20th LP, aethermead: more organic, more vulnerable, more psychedelic than anything they’ve released in a decade-plus.
Fittingly, given how direct it feels, the project emerged during a time of painful—but also inspiring—evolution for Barnes, following the end of an eight-year relationship and a move from Vermont to Brooklyn. There, Barnes recruited the live band (drummer Clayton Rychlik, keyboardist Jojo Glidewell, bassist Ross Brand) for a brisk five-day studio session, followed by a period of solo home-studio tinkering. The end product is overtly band-centric in a way that suits the songs’ tight, uncluttered vision.
aethermead sort of plays like a companion piece to 2013’s Lousy With Sylvianbriar, another immediate album that leaned heavily into folk-rock and psych. “Listen to Music and Cry” is a perfect example, dropping bouquets of vocal harmonies over gleaming, warm-bath keys and up-front, phasing guitars. “If I have one regret, it’s that I wasn’t more of a friend,” Barnes sings, gorgeously frozen and shockingly plainspoken. “I could have done so much better, especially towards the end.” Much of the record occupies that dreamy space, whether the band is strolling through trippy folk meadows (“Lacan in the Family”) or flirting with arty, lightly jazzy atmospheres (“From the Font of You,” on which Barnes coos in a sort of trance, “You turn my body and brain to mush”).
Because so many of Montreal albums thrive on giddy ping-ponging between styles and moods, the overall consistency of aethermead is almost startling. Ironically, though, two of its obvious anthems break out of that comforting haze: On “Take the Form,” they swerve into a steady, lightly post-punk churn, highlighted by spasms of rabid electric guitar. (“If I can do no harm,” Barnes observes, “then I can do no good.”) And centerpiece “When” masks yearning and angst into a rattling song about, at least superficially, carnal desires: “I’m not trying to have an emotional connection,” Barnes sings, over a violent post-disco groove. “I just want to fuck you again.”
Every of Montreal album is unique—and in an ideal world, we’d salute artists for following whatever path feels right in the moment, even at the expense of alienating fans. If you seek out of Montreal for rich sonics and tightly composed songs, aethermead will probably inch toward the top of your album ranking. Do you want the weirder stuff? Good news—if history is any indication, more shapeshifting is right around the corner. [Polyvinyl]
Ryan Reed is a writer and editor from Knoxville, Tennessee. In addition to Paste, his work has appeared over the years in Rolling Stone, Revolver, The New York Times, Pitchfork, and many other publications.
Listen to of Montreal’s Daytrotter sessions here and here.
