For 30 years now, Of Montreal has functioned less as a band and more as a vehicle for exploring Kevin Barnes’ emotional whims. Between shifting lineups, a problematic alter ego, and plenty of glam makeup, they have tried out stripped-down twee, the funk heights of Prince, festival-ready synth-pop, and EDM sirens. Barnes chronicled the impasses in their first marriage across multiple albums: 2007’s high-water-mark Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? took a kaleidoscopic approach to an early separation, while 2015’s somber Aureate Gloom arrived after the couple’s permanent split. No matter what style Barnes is toying with, their antenna perks up when relationships start to fray. You hear them singing about infatuation? Just be ready for the other shoe to drop.
Last summer, Barnes ended a relationship of eight years and relocated from Vermont to Brooklyn. Those events could serve as a promising muse for Aethermead, Of Montreal’s 20th album. Barnes works well in emotional extremes, and their strongest material feels like you’re sitting in a bumper car as they rattle on about breakdowns and dreams in your ear. It’s easiest to enjoy when holding on for dear life. Unfortunately, Barnes’ drab palate—sandy acoustic guitars, squeals of distortion, drums so familiar that they might as well be wallpaper—leave these tales of heartbreak in the lurch. Gone are the shouts, squeals, and Bowie impressions of 2022’s Freewave Lucifer f<ck f^ck f>ck. Instead, Barnes spends much of Aethermead muttering like they don’t want anyone to hear.
Save for the wayward xylophone on “From the Font of You” or the barely-audible slide guitar from “Hack It Up.” Barnes’ maximalist tendencies are put on pause. Maybe it’s an attempt to capture the sleepless haze that comes after the worst breakups. But the plodding atmosphere only rarely lets up: “Lacan in the Family” elbows towards an urgent crush of distortion, while Barnes sings the Yeah Yeah Yeahs rip “When” like a dog in heat. Every few measures, a warbling guitar intrudes as if it were chuckling at lines like “I just wanna fuck you again.” At least Barnes isn’t singing about situationships.
Barnes once imbued their relationship odysseys with enough levity to keep the party going. Flashes of those less-suffocating times appear across Aethermead. Take the lounge-singer growl that Barnes inhabits while begging for attention on “Wanting on Air.” Or “Now We Cringe at the Thought,” where one-time considerations about marriage and children curdle into pure frustration over an ominous bassline worthy of Dick Tracy. But Barnes’ delivery doesn’t reflect the hurt they sing about in hushed tones. Even their violent thoughts—“Every obsession takes a dark turn and you can take one too/Shot in the back of the head in a hearse,” they report on “Hack It Up”—come across like mere suggestions.
What occasionally helps Aethermead is Barnes’ palpable bitterness. Petty feelings are nothing new for Of Montreal, but they provide these featherlight songs with relatable tension. Amid the flowing details of “Dismissal Mosaics,” Barnes intones that they were never meant to be a “hick in Vermont.” At one point, Barnes castigates their ex for writing the “Sad Girl’s Guide to Breaking Up and Staying Angry.” A few overblown images—aliens, pyramids, and smeared feces—act as a reminder that Barnes’ lyrical eccentricities were once paired with towering psych-pop structures. Each of those lines still arrive at the same problem: If Barnes doesn’t sound interested in their breakup, why should you?
