of Montreal – LOUSY
WITH SYLVIANBRIAR
Well, I’ll be damned:
Lousy With Sylvianbriar is just as
good as I remember. I may have overreacted with my rating back when it was
released, but what an entertaining onslaught of melodies and ideas (not least
lyrical, though that’s a topic for a separate article) this album is.
All the more
surprising because I’m not even an of Montreal fan. Up to 2013, they’d been
patchy at best, but then along came “Fugitive Air”, and something clicked. I’m
still agnostic about Kevin Barnes’s earlier records (colourful and mad though
they are), but everything about Lousy
With Sylvianbriar smacks of demented brilliance.
“Amphibian Days” has
the sort of seductive vocal tune that is like one prolonged orgasm. Barnes
sings it that way, too. “Obsidian Currents” doesn’t quite reach the same
heights, but the vitriolic lyrics more than make up for that. And it all hits
the climax, both melodic and lyrical, on the head-spinning “Belle Glade Missionaries” that has this lovely middle-eight to blow you away:
I have a sense you want to be the
female Henry Miller
Cynically referring to your
lovers as your pricks
And exploiting other people’s
madness.
