Listen to "Bassem Sabry", the first track off "Aureate Gloom"

Here's a brand new track !



This is the first (and pretty exciting, I might add) excerpt from Aureate Gloom, which is set to be released on March 3rd. As usual, you can pre-order it (along with a nifty shirt) from Polyvinyl.

The Lagniappe Session

Aquarium Drunkard celebrated the release of Lousy with Sylvianbriar with a brand new acoustic session. Unfortunately there is no new material, but three new covers (here's the comprehensive list of oM covers, thanks to Matt at You Ain't No Picasso). Click here for the three songs and Kevin's explanations as to why he chose them.

Fugitive Air video + Rolling Stone interview

The Huffington Post just premiered the video for Fugitive Air. The video manages to find the perfect spot where old oM meets new oM, it's got that seventies folk vibe but it's also got the makeup and the fake blood and the nudity and the video projections. Not bad at all.   



Yesterday Rolling Stone published the lengthiest interview of the new era so far. There isn't much that we didn't already know.

For those of you who don't check out TBP's facebook page or twitter account, you may not be aware that Lousy With Sylvianbriar has now officially become oM's most critically acclaimed record! I'm not the one saying it, Metacritic is.  It's probably got something to do with the fact that P4K finally decided to let it go and to review Elf Power's latest instead of Lousy With Sylvianbriar. 

The Past Is A Grotesque Animal

The Past Is A Grotesque Animal : 6 years, 11 minutes, 12 band members, 24 different stage setups, 36 outfits, 1.326.487 goosebumps... 





of Montreal: The Past is a Grotesque Animal from jason miller on Vimeo.


(c) Jason Miller. from the upcoming Song Dynasties DVD.

Lousy With Sylvianbriar up for pre-order, listen to the first single

Lousy With Sylvianbriar has an artwork, a release date, eleven songs and a first single, and a pre-order page on Polyvinyl's website... It'd be easy to say that Fugitive Air harkens back to the first few of Montreal albums, but on my third listen, I actually think of it as an alternate route the band might have taken after Aldhils Arboretum.

She Ain't Speaking Now - New song!

Someone uploaded this video to youtube a couple of months ago but it flew well under my radar until now... Here's an acoustic version of a song that may or may not end up on Lousy With Sylvianbriar, but it sure gives us a hint of what to expect. Of course, this seems to have been an impromptu backstage performance so it's missing all the bells and whistles (though from what we gathered, the next album will sound definitely more low-key than what we've been used to recently), but still worth sharing. In order to find out more about the upcoming record, you may want to read this Rolling Stone interview that was published a few weeks ago.

Two live videos from 1995

You read this right, it is not a typo! Here are two videos from almost 20 years of Kevin Barnes performing "Waitress" and "Dustin Hoffman Needs A Bath."

Sunlandic Twins picture disc

While I would love to post about the upcoming album or tour, the only piece of news I have to offer is a vinyl picture disc re-issue. Polyvinyl is starting a picture disc series and they're starting it off with the Sunlandic Twins. For $20, you can get one of the 535 copies that will be printed for the occasion. No extra track, just this rather eye-pleasing design on vinyl instead of cardboard. 

Click here for more information.

 

New Album Finished

And somehow the Miami New Times got the scoop! It was apparently written in three weeks, recorded in two, with the whole band on tape. Now we only have to figure out who's in the band these days.

Noisey Vice session, Under the Radar feature

OK, so this was posted on the 15th, but believe it or not, for the past four days I've had more important things to attend to than this page. (don't worry, this doesn't mean I'm getting a life) So what are the goods there? I'll start with the acoustic rendering of Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse, which still does it for me after all these years, even though that is the second video... The first one is Feminine Effects featuring Rebecca Cash. It is kind of funny that these two songs were written more than 7 years ago and we're still hearing them when there is obviously something big happening at the Sunlandic Studios these days. I know a lot of you have been asking about the plan to release a couple of singles, but I don't have any news on that front. For all I know, this isn't going to happen in the foreseeable future. We are also getting closer to getting our goodies from the Kickstarter campaign, but they're really lousy when it comes to updates, so I'm just going to assume that everything is going according to the schedule. Now that would be a first.



The January/February issue of Under The Radar is boasting a rather impressive 2012 artist survey (along with a less impressive Grimes cover), and you can check out some of Kevin's answers online for free. Read them here. You can also buy the magazine anywhere in the US, and if you're (un?)fortunate to live abroad, you can treat yourself to a zinio download for a pretty reasonable price.

NPR's Tiny Desk Concert

Ever since hearing that of Montreal had stopped in NPR's offices back on December 12th for a Tiny Desk Concert, we'd been waiting for them to share the performance with us. It "only" took seven weeks for the session to appear on NPR's website... The good news is that there is a (the?) duet with Rebecca Cash and two unreleased songs that (possibly) pave the way for future recordings. The first one is "Imbecile Rages," which is somehow reminiscent of "There is Nothing Wrong With Hating Rock Critics" and the quite promising "Amphibian Days." Enjoy the session below.

2012 : (not) everything I missed

As we're getting ready to kiss goodbye to 2012, I figured now would be the right time to post all the things that somehow slipped under my radar. First off, here are a few interviews from earlier this month : Brooklyn Vegan interview.. Clevescene's Book of Barnes interview. Dig Boston. The Dallas Front Row. ... Followed by a video that was shot when the band played the Primavera Festival in April. I can't seem to figure out when this was actually uploaded, but it's only got 51 views... What's up with that? And also a P4K 60 Seconds Left video from around the same time : And finally, and I must have slept through entire days (or weeks?!) to miss it, the official video for Feminine Effects!

KB 1 - BP 2

Kevin scored the first goal by answering the Austinist's questions and revealing that the next album might sound like "outlaw country, folk music, and kind of older, mountain music, all that stuff." I see you smile and shake your head, but he's been "almost sort of training myself to move in this move in this new direction." So wipe that smirk off your face and get ready for OMM.7. Bryan then tied the game with an interview that reveals what happened during the first leg of the SPITA tour in 2004... and scored a second goal by wearing a costume that screams "outlaw country." Game over. In the end BP always wins.



The video was shot right before the band headed off for tour last week, and may be included in Song Dynasties if the project ever gets funded. 8 days to go, 80% funded. Head over to kickstarter to pledge, or pledge a little bit more if you have already pledged. Just don't buy your little cousin that crappy made in China plastic toy for Christmas and re-invest the 10 bucks in of Montreal, then use your ten fingers to make that kid something cheap and cool!

2 interviews and a cover

It's been a big week for of Montreal (who would have thought?) After the announcement of the kickstarter campaign, Kevin started promoting the upcoming tour by giving a couple of interviews. The first one I found was in the Miami New Times and is mainly concerned with songwriting from the very beginning to the latest album. At the very end of the interview, Kevin mysteriously informs us that next year he will be taking two weeks off "somewhere" to "[be] in this place writing, which I've never done before." So what is he going to write he's never written before? A book of poems? A novel? An essay about the current situation in the Middle East? The Buzzine interviewer took a different approach and asked about the band as a performing entity, from the early days up to the latest tours via the A Polinaire Rave comedy shows, emphasizing the lack of democratic input from other band members.* And on Friday, Kevin (with the help of Nina for the simple and soothing visuals, I guess) unleashed a very nice version of the Beach Boys' Little Bird. Check it out below!





If you want to compare it with the original, you can find it here on youtube - if you don't live in France, that is, because I'm only getting this :

~~~~~~ * Nov. 20th edit You can also watch the Buzzine interview if reading isn't your thing. ;)

the long-awaited oM DVD is going to happen if you want it to!

Very good news, my friends! The long-awaited DVD is finally about to be released! The band is just asking us to pitch in and pledge a little something (or a big something, depending on how generous you feel and what you want) so they can release it. They need $75.000 and are offering a lot of options from $1 to $2.500 - head over to kickstarter to see all you can get!


Here's the trailer to get you pumped, just in case you're not already ready to donate.

Family Nouveau on youtube

I know a lot of you have been waiting to see this, and here it is, finally, on youtube : a 45-minute-long trip down memory lane. Watch out for yours truly's name when the credit rolls! Now of course I can't blackmail you into doing nice things for me on the off-chance that I might give you the video files. Ha. The end of an era.


Here's what The Stranger had to say about this when it premiered more than two years ago.

Sails Hermaphroditic video

Pitchfork just premiered the video for Sails, Hermaphroditic. While it is one of the weakest track on Daughter of Cloud (yes, I am entitled to an opinion), this video actually makes it a lot more enjoyable. Thanks to Nina's direction and editing, there's action and color and some kind of storyline, and it actually features members of the band. What more could you possibly want? Here's what Kevin said about it :"Two rival gangs, the Sleep Rats and the Preppy Scuz, meet in a bull pasture in the deep south to compete in a football game. The game quickly devolves into a violent bloody rumble. Through out the game people occasionally lose themselves in a psychedelic sexual reverie. Eventually the battle is broken up by a gonzo performance by the legendary Newcastle hair-metal band Moat-er-Wilde." Watch it below and tell us what you think about it!

Stream Daughter of Cloud at MTV hive

On Daughter of Cloud's official release day, MTV Hive has it streaming in its entirety, along with a relatively small but interesting interview. Read and listen here.

Reviews seem pretty positive so far, including Pitchfork rating it 5.8 (which is better than Paralytic Stalks, if memory serves me right), and Clash Music 8 out of 10. Personally, I'd say it's a symptom of a society in which no-one (including music "critics" and music "fans", which is really worrying if you think about it) seems willing to settle down for one hour to listen to music and would rather have a collection of songs that can easily be disconnected into little pieces, but that must be me getting old and grumpy.

of Montreal in Filter Magazine's Good Music Guide

To promote this weekend's festival performances, of Montreal gets a 6-page-long feature in this month's Filter Magazine. It's got fantastic pictures (see below or check out Nina Twin's Instagram) and a pretty good interview about some of the songs on Daughter of Cloud and a possible next step in yet another (quite) unforeseen direction. For those of us who can neither "pick up a printed version of Filter Good Music Guide 41 at the year's Culture Collide Festival" nor buy it from "select awesome newstands," it is downloadable as a pdf file for free here. Show Filter some love by following them on Twitter or facebook, or subscribe for four issues.

If you haven't done so yet, you can pre-order Daughter of Cloud from Polyvinyl in a variety of formats (comes with an instant download) and Harouki Zombi's first EP, "Objet Petit a" (yet another nightmare of capitalization, no idea if I'm doing it right but I sure am doing it logically), both set to drop this month. 

Kevin on Solange, new material

Head over to MTV Hive (just realised it was "Hive", not "Hype" like I always thought it was, unless there is indeed a MTV Hype, too...) to see what Kevin has to say about his collaboration with Solange, and what he's currently working on.

As previously reported, the track Kevin worked on with Solange is about to be released as the b-side to her new single, Losing You. (see trailer below)





Halfway through this Pittsburgh Post Gazette podcast, you'll hear Kevin answering questions about of Montreal's evolution throughout the years (if you listen closely, you get the feeling he's typing at the same time or something, multitasking might be the reason why we get an album every 18 months or so...). Nothing new there, but how often do you get the chance to listen to his voice on the radio?