We’ll emote ‘til we’re dead.
Celebrating 10 years of Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
When you're entering adulthood but still growing, music can hit you in such a deep and meaningful way. At least for highly sensitive creative types, there are moments of musical discovery that touch you and speak to you as though the songs were born inside of you, and you had just been waiting for them to be realized over the airwaves. This is where I was in 2007 when Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? came out. I had been moving through high school and college consuming new and different music like a kid in a candy store, and I was neck deep in sweets during the years I worked at my college's radio station.
When the promo ad for of Montreal's 10 year deluxe anniversary vinyl set for Hissing Fauna begins playing the opening notes of "Suffer for Fashion" in my Facebook feed, I relive the whole experience of the album. I do not just mean all of the songs. I mean the experience I felt listening to the album in 2007 – something singular and all-consuming.
At this time in my life, someone who I had been friends with in high school said something to the effect of, “You won't care about these bands in ten or fifteen years. They are just a phase you are going through right now.” (For the record, never say this to someone. Just let people like things.) The bands I were engaging with at this time included The Mountain Goats, The Blow, The Silver Jews, The Go! Team, and others. I believe most of them have aged well. John Darnielle is hailed as one of our greatest modern story tellers, and I listen to Paper Television basically any time a romantic partner rejects me. And any time since it's release that I've listened to Hissing Fauna, it has felt like the first time.
Hissing Fauna has been referred to as a concept album, and when I started listening to it in 2007, I took this idea and fully extrapolated it in my brain. I looked at each track as a musical number on a stage. Our protagonist: a key member of a community of friends, musicians, and performers. He is plagued by depression and inner demons. They isolate him from his loved ones, plague his relationship, and keep him locked inside. Midway through the show he evolves – he comes out of hiding in a new persona. He is fabulous, aggressive, prone to flourishes and infidelity. In the end, he comes around, gets healthy, and is grounded by his family.
I could see this clearly. I staged it out in my head. I came home for summer break, and I tried to share the album with friends and family, but how can you translate something so personal and beautiful? How can you explain art that transcends regular songs?
Kevin Barnes in a weird coffin during the Hissing Fauna tour.
My fictionalized version of Hissing Fauna is merely a dressed up, stretched out version of Kevin Barnes's most personal album to be released at that point in his career. He did suffer from depression. He did, I'm sure, hole himself up, have trouble writing, falter on tour, and eventually come through to be a husband and father to Nina Barnes and his young daughter. But these truths come through layers of upbeat, glamourous sound.
Of Montreal has an established history of bizarre, sometimes psychadelic pop records, and on a first pass, tracks like “Heimdelsgate like a Promethean Curse” sounds sassy and drug-induced, but when Barnes sings about “chemicals,” he is actually talking about side effects of anti-depressants. The song is a plea to the depressed brain, begging, “Please. Please work like you're supposed to.” The bass line on “Gronlandic Edit” can read as upbeat, particularly while Barnes's vocals cascade up and down the track. Meanwhile, however, the lyrics describe someone who is too depressed to leave his home.
“I spent the winter with my nose buried in a book trying to restructure my character because it had become vile to its creator.” Barnes sings this right before the album's turning point. The lyric is a farewell to the narrator that the listener knows. The following track, “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal,” marks the mid-point of the album where our singer morphs into Barnes's alter-ego, Georgie Fruit. From here, the songs take a more agressive tone. Songs like "Bunny Ain't No Kind of Rider" and "Labyrinthian Pomp" are catchy and fun, but they carry a serious sass and assertiveness that the earlier tracks give away in favor of more vulnerability. Georgie Fruit means business.
At one point during the Hissing Fauna tour, Kevin Barnes rode this friendly horse on stage.
For all of the glitz and odd song titles on Hissing Fauna, part of the album's charm is how straightfoward the tracks are. Of Montreal knows when to be high concept, but they also know when to cut to the chase. Lyrics like “Somehow you've red-rovered the gestapo circling my heart” exist next to others such as “There's the girl that left me bitter. Want to pay some other girl to just go up to her and hit her.” And all of it fits beautifully together.
I remember watching of Montreal in concert during the tour for this album. This was not a live show. It was performance art. I could not coherently describe the show to you now, but in the moment, when I was watching in awe, I fully understood every stage prop, every splash of body paint, each dark body suit, and how they all pertained to the narrative of Hissing Fauna." I remember fully appreciating of Montreal more than I have ever appreciated every other band. I admired how all-incompassing the Hissing Fauna experience was, from the arc of the album, to the show, to the album art. Certainly similar pieces of music have been created by David Bowie or other bands outside of my frame of reference, but as a junior in college, of Montreal seemed untouchable.
The albums following Hissing Fauna seemed different than the ones preceding it. Certainly the band was now creating music after receiving unprecedented critical acclaim. It was as though their new material was specifically an offshoot from Hissing Fauna (a feeling reinforced by their following albums sporting titles that could be found in the lyrics of Hissing Fauna). A post-Hissing Fauna of Montreal was a different animal, with Georgie Fruit making his presence known in the new material.
I cherish every time a favorite artist of mine reinvents his or herself, and of Montreal is a prolific band with an expansive discography. But Hissing Fauna will always live in my heart as a ground-breaking album, an album that made me love music in a completely new way.
Happy birthday.
