September 15th, 2022 4:06pm
Doing Confrontational Yoga
One of the pleasures of following Kevin Barnes’ career in real time is that each Of Montreal record truly feels like checking in with them, each record like a scene report on their inner life. In recent years Barnes has cycled through a sort of psychosexual rebirth, new love, paranoia about politics, and embracing/accepting chaos as part of life. This time around on Freewave Lucifer fck Barnes is responding to pandemic-era uncertainty with escapism and dissociation, diving deep into subconscious modes as a response to being cut off from the world. The results are stylistically scattered and a little uneven, but “Ofrenda-Flanger-Ego-à Gogo” stands out as one of their best songs in a psychedelic folk mode. Barnes’ is no stranger to free-association lyrics but the words slip out in this one like each new phrase reveals something about the previous line. It’s not really a narrative, but it’s a feeling given more context. Broadly speaking, this is like Barnes moving to some astral plane and witnessing depressive disconnection at a grand level, like something making its way through a large system.
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