Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
Posted by: Tasos Alvas in Reviews, tags: Music, Reviews
I am passing through a brief infatuation period with the 2007 album of Of Montreal “Hissing Fauna, are you the Destroyer?“, which (well, personally) I find to be one of the year’s most interesting releases.
The album was released in January 23, 2007, written, performed, and recorded by Kevin Barnes, with assistance from friends and family: James Huggins, Heather McIntosh and Nina Twin and Alabee Blonde (Barnes’ wife and daughter respectively). It could be generally considered indie-pop or indie-rock, with a lot of psychedelic influences, which kinda make sense if you listen to Of Montreal’s previous work.
The whole Of Montreal concept is based around a failed romance of Barnes’ with a woman from Montreal, though the story is told differently by Barnes in different interviews, and to me it seems a bit shallow for a driving force behind something that’s lasted like 10 years. The album itself follows a loose concept hinting at the Montreal story but mainly being about Barnes himself and his new-found chemically balanced anti-depressed self.
I find it pretty interesting that an album as lively and fresh as this one is not someone’s debut one but somewhere around their 11th, where most groups with similar quantities of material have already started producing trash after their first few albums.
Checking out the material that came before, the group’s sound starts from a bit out-of-time psychedelic rock (1997 is a bit late for rock psychedelia, no?) and slowly but steadily matures, the groove getting funkier, richer and more volatile and the lyrics dropping a lot of the nonsensical surrealism (a thing which I vastly enjoy) of the early works to make room for personal expression which, as this last album proves, is one of Barnes’ really strong points.
Ok, review’s over. Now start liking this album before your friends do so first 
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