of Montreal are not a band. Or, at least, they haven't been for quite some time: Since 2004's breakthrough sixth full-length, Satanic Panic in the Attic, Kevin Barnes has largely written, recorded, and performed every album on his own, occasionally calling on outside collaborators (Janelle Monaé, Solange Knowles, Jon Brion) to add flourishes. He made the decision to shift toward creative solitude nearly eight years into a career that has now spanned 16, and the decision made sense. Since Satanic Panic, Barnes has treated the LP form as a highly personal forum exploration, a place to indulge his every whim without regard for his audience.
In that sense, of Montreal's latest, Paralytic Stalks, is more of the same: Barnes recorded it in his own Sunlandic Studios with the assistance of strings arranger/performer Kishi Bashi and a smattering of session musicians, and has stated that the album is meant to be taken whole. But even for a songwriter as sonically adventurous as Barnes, something feels different this time around. He's always been fond of concepts (2008's alter-ego-happy Skeletal Lamping, the funk freakouts of 2010's False Priest), but on Paralytic Stalks, he sounds completely adrift, as if his thousand-synapses-firing-all-at-once approach finally blew a massive fuse.
When I spoke with Barnes this past fall about the influences driving the creation of Paralytic Stalks, he cited difficult 20th-century composers such as Charles Ives and Krzysztof Penderecki, predicting it'd be a hard sell for most listeners before doubling back and referring to it as a "colorful pop record." The truth lies somewhere in the middle. It is, without a doubt, his most fragmented album since the tail end of the project's Elephant 6 days, which is saying a lot considering the tiny stitched-together segments made Skeletal Lamping such a challenging, divisive album. To me, that record sounded like a pleasurably jumbled mess of endless possibilities; Paralytic Stalks just sounds like a mess.
The seam in Paralytic Stalks' patchwork comes at the midpoint of "Ye, Renew the Plaintiff", which delineates the album's two halves. The front half plays to strengths Barnes' has honed over the last eight years-- stuffed production on the brink of exploding, melodies that constantly change direction, and unhinged vocal performances. The hooks just aren't there, though, and that's a big problem, considering that even Barnes' most esoteric records have had their share of memorable take-aways (Skeletal Lamping's "An Eluardian Instance", False Priest's "Our Riotous Defects"). With the possible exception of "Malefic Dowery", which is surprisingly lush, little here sticks.
The "20th-century classical music" influence comes during the album's second half: Its songs run longer, and they're packed with dissonant drones, screeching noise, and, in the case of "Exorcismic Breeding Knife", a surging orchestral cacophony. It's challenging stuff, a distant cousin to the kind of abstractions that Barnes flirted with on last year's thecontrollersphere EP. Barnes doesn't go all-in, but rather, pastes bits of psychedelia, stuttering synth-funk, and hushed piano balladry on the ends of "Wintered Debts" and "Authentic Pyrrhic Remission", which all feels utterly wasted given the shapeless and indistinct surroundings.
The most disappointing aspect of Paralytic Stalks is that lack of personality behind the music. Barnes has treated songwriting as a personal therapy session, and the recording studio as a psychologist's couch under mirrored ceilings. On 2007's brilliant Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, he faced off with his super-ego amidst infidelity, depression, and self-destruction; the following year's Skeletal Lamping contained so much him that he needed an alter-ego, the glammy sexpot Georgie Fruit, to get it all out there.
The words "personal" and "dark" have been referenced in Paralytic's promotional lead-up, but without a lyric sheet, it's nearly impossible to tell that Barnes is singing about anything, save for the surprisingly straightforward "Malefic Dowery", which goes back to the the subject of infidelity. I don't doubt that this is a personal album for Barnes, but on Hissing Fauna, that was obvious-- all you had to do was listen. Here, we're left sorting through lyrics like, "True love never mattered/ The two donkey jaws that were removed from our hearing."
It's hard to blame Barnes for being tired. Since the project's 1997 debut, Cherry Peel, of Montreal haven't gone a year without issuing some sort of new material. By now, he's akin to a Steven Soderbergh, an artist so driven to follow his muse that, even in the face of exhaustion, the thought of retirement only spurs him to work more. The thoroughly unenjoyable Paralytic Stalks might be a sign that Barnes should take some time off and let the inspiration come to him.
