of Montreal. Paralytic Stalks LP

of Montreal Paralytic Stalks
2012, Polyvinyl

by Martin White

9.1 / 10

Paralytic Stalks is one fractured, disorienting mess of an album.  Not only is it fairly long, but it actually becomes more and more difficult to digest as it progresses.  It is a collage of ideas, meticulously constructed, then shattered and hastily thrown back together.  Any description I provide will surely fail to capture the full scope of the album's sound and content, but I'll try anyway.  There are spoken word passages, sometimes puzzling passages of avant-garde noise, deliriously catchy hooks--as good as anything Kevin Barnes has put on record since Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer, and countless layers of instrumentation and orchestration.  That this all comes together with even a shred of coherence is probably a stroke of genius.  Mostly, though, the record's barely controlled chaos reflects its personal nature for Barnes.  What you find in these songs is a reflection of his state of mind and the turmoil going on inside, concerning his depression, relationships, and beliefs.  Of course, none of that is likely to fall into neatly digestible song structures.  But this gives of Montreal's 11th LP a sense of freedom from convention and an unpredictability that results in a piece of work that is brilliantly exhilarating and exceptionally unique.  

The real key to the record's success is Barnes' renewed melodic and lyrical incisiveness.  He deposits track upon track of instrumentation, back-up vocals, fragments of sound and texture; but the central musical and lyrical motifs come through with a cleaner and more focused intent than anything he's released in half a decade.  "It's fucking sad that we need a tragedy to occur to gain a fresh perspective in our lives," he snarls at the start of "Spiteful Intervention." It's hard to imagine hearing a more sardonic indictment of our society.  But he doesn't stop there, delivering another stab with the line "Nothing happens for a reason, there's no point even pretending / You know the sad truth as well as I."  The song features a seething Barnes throwing barbs at whomever he pleases.  And often himself.  Here, like Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, Barnes returns to the damaged ground of his own conscious.  "Ye, Renew the Plaintiff" is a plunge into self-loathing on the same scale as "The Past is a Grotesque Animal."  Except this time he has replaced the urgent-but-slow-burning disco with a stomping, insistent, and psychotic rock-out interjected with howling guitars and scarred pleas to his wife Nina.  Even when he "should be happy," he feels "corrupted, broken, impotent, and insane!"  These are the disturbing words of a man revealing what likes in the dark corners of his mind with a frightening directness.  

Musically, though, Paralytic Stalks is very different from anything in of Montreal's catalog or the current indie landscape.  There is a healthy list of touchstones and influences, however.  Barnes has said that he was inspired by progressive composers Krzysztof Penderecki and Charles Ives, and this becomes very evident on the back end of the record.  "Wintered Debts" and "Authentic Pyrrhic Remission" develop in multi-section suites, both featuring dissonant string conflicts before they resolve with a more upbeat conclusion.  But the first half of the record owes more to 70's glam rock than anything else, and the hooks on "Dour Percentage" are the best that David Bowie never wrote; a sublime hybrid of everything from Ziggy Stardust to Station to Station and Low.  "We Will Commit Wolf Murder" sounds like a direct descendant of The Flaming Lips with its percolating bass lines, tumbling and cascading drums, and swelling string arrangements, dripping with sarcastic melodrama.  He drops melancholy, neurotic refrains of "someone's terrorized my pysche to get even / lately you're the only human I believe in," while the revelation that "there's blood in my hair" calls back to Wayne Coyne's realization, on The Soft Bulletin, that "I accidentally touched my head / and noticed that I had been bleeding."

But in the end, it is Barnes' creative voice and personality that make this record.  The pure bass-driven funk of "Authentic Pyrrhic Remission" is exactly what of Montreal has always done best.  

It is also refreshing to hear Barnes return to a very personal place to create something out of pure expression, without concern for what critics will say or people will think.  It doesn't necessarily work all the time, and there are some questionable moments that might test your patience.  For one, it is not quite clear what part the "Revolution 9"-esque "Exorcismic Breeding Knife" plays here.  Perhaps it is just a subconscious expression of Barnes' Beatles fantasies that could not be filled by his pop contrivances.  The emotive string arrangements of "Wintered Debts" are significantly more purposeful.  Some will point to moments like "Exorcismic Breeding Knife" and claim pretension.  But great art (and music) is never universally loved anyway, and it takes a lot of risk and a sense of adventure to create something that is really worth standing the test of time.  Certainly Kevin Barnes has never shied away from taking risks, and this time he might just have crafted another near-masterpiece.