The wholly electronic-based White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood is a scatterbrained album that delights as often as it confounds, and really stands out from every other of Montreal release.
Here’s an interesting fact: since of Montreal released their debut Cherry Peel in 1997, there have only been two years (2009 and 2014) where they have not released a studio album, compilation, or EP in any given year. At this rate, there’s more than a 90 percent chance of Montreal will release something each year.
If you can’t tell, of Montreal’s frontman Kevin Barnes hasn’t been one to shy away from using music to express himself. What started as a solo act expanded into a full psychedelic pop band around 2000, yet collaborators have come on gone and Barnes has been the band’s mastermind and sole constant member throughout the band’s life. In other words, of Montreal is very much Barnes’s project.
Just as the band’s membership and style have evolved, so have Barnes’s inspirations for each album. While early songs were childlike character sketches, of Montreal’s lyrics have grown increasingly autobiographical. You can chart the relationship with his now former-wife from the early infatuation of 2004’s Satanic Panic in the Attic to the breakdown on 2012’s Paralytic Stalks to the divorce on 2015’s Aureate Gloom. And just as you’d expect from someone who wears their heart on their musical sleeve in this manner, Barnes prefaces his albums with press releases that leave no question as to what was going through his mind during the recording process.
Prior to the release of his fifteenth studio album White is Relic/Irrealis Mood, Barnes penned a lengthy announcement that was part confessional, part socially conscious, and part conspiratorial. To sum up, Barnes forgave himself for his failed marriage and fell in love with someone new, studied the works of left-wing authors and learned how systems are skewed in favor of the rich and white, and…became paranoid that we live in a simulated reality. Musically, he was inspired by the extended club mixes of electronic music from the 80s (like those found on New Order’s Substance) and recorded the album almost entirely by himself. It may be a peculiar introduction to an album, but it’s more compelling than Innocence Reaches’s inspiration of “I listened to a lot of EDM.”
True to the announcement, White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood is a scatterbrained album that delights as often as it confounds. It’s a wholly electronic-based, logical enough progression from Innocence Reaches, and solidifies that the band is prone to having “phases.” It may bear little resemblance to the of Montreal of yesteryear, but beneath these surface-level differences, White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood is full of Barnes’s unique flourishes that distinguish it as one of his self-expressive outlets.
Looking at the tracklist for White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood, you’ll notice two peculiar characteristics: first, that there are only six tracks, each with an average length of seven minutes, and second, that each track has two titles, just like the album. Barnes explained the dual titling as necessary because of “how difficult it is to frame the message of a song with just one title,” but this attribute often serves a much more pragmatic purpose on the album. Essentially, most tracks are two songs in one, smoothly blended together to achieve Barnes’s “extended club mix” feel. Think of how Soft Cell’s mega-hit “Tainted Love” slowly becomes “Where Did Our Love Go?” in the full version of the song.
On White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood, the album’s first single “Paranoiac Intervals/Body Dysmorphia” excels with this intended effect. After almost exactly four and a half minutes of upbeat synthpop with a supremely catchy chorus, including the lyric “counting wolves in your paranoiac intervals,” Barnes chants in a robotic monotone before the bassline noticeably goes from providing harmony to leading an all new melody. This marks the start of the track’s second, darker, half, where Barnes laments “I know how it feels, it feels, feels ugly, body dysmorphia.” While there’s a marked difference in tone between these sections, especially if you jump from one to the other, the transition between them feels completely natural, and this segue is one of the highlights of White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood.
It should come as no surprise that Barnes excels with longer tracks, since 2007’s landmark Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? included the near-12 minute centerpiece “The Past Is a Grotesque Animal.” On White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood, don’t be surprised if you find yourself wishing some tracks were longer. Second single “Plateau Phase/No Careerism, No Corruption,” lacks a clear distinction between its titular parts, but the trap-like shuffle of its chorus could have repeated itself several more times with no complaints from listeners. Opener “Soft Music/Juno Portraits of the Jovian Sky” feels like it’s justwarming up after it convulses with an electro-funk beat for five and a half minutes. One of the few collaborators on the album, Zac Colwell, provides a saxophone that greatly elevates the glam of “Sophie Calle Private Game,” and you may feel the second half, “Every Person Is a Pussy, Every Pussy Is a Star!” arrives too soon. Condensing an album into a handful of long tracks can be a high-stakes game, and luckily listeners will likely wonder “that’s it?” more than “when does this end?”
While the format is unprecedented for of Montreal, there are touches of the band’s past littered throughout White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood. The closing track “If you Talk to Symbol/Hostility Voyeur” unwinds into a pulsating bass part comparable to “Windowsucking” from last year’s Rune Husk EP, while Barnes’s vocoded voice and plain-spoken rapping seem like they pulled from False Priest’s “You Do Mutiliate?” and “Our Riotous Defects.” Similarly, some of the more sexual lyrics on the album, like the out-of-left-field opening “fucked in your driveway” on “Plateau Phase/No Careerism, No Corruption,” seem straight from Barnes’s “Georgie Fruit” era. However, the greatest thread tying together of Montreal’s lengthy discography over the decades has been Barnes’s distinctive voice, which might be why White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood can be easily identified as an of Montreal release despite the varying instrumentation. This also explains why the industrial “Writing the Circles/Orgone Tropics,” where Barnes’s voice is artificially pitched up, sounds so out of place as it’s the only moment where White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood will make you do a bona fide double-take.
Of course, it wouldn’t be an of Montreal album without cryptic lyrics that make you reach for your dictionary, and White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood occasionally drops words like “acyanoblepsia” (color blindness with the inability to distinguish blue) in its dance mixes. This might be why Barnes’s inspirations would have been difficult to pick out without his specific prefaces. Much like how of Montreal’s provocatively-titled 2003 compilation If He Is Protecting Our Nation, Then Who Will Protect Big Oil, Our Children? lacked any sort of critique of the Bush administration in its verses, the only part of White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood that seems to deal with social issues at all comes on “Soft Music/Juno Portraits of the Jovian Sky” when Barnes references an “Anglo influx” on “besieged Bushwick streets” that he calls “white flight in reverse.” Even this semi-commentary on gentrification is largely lost amidst Barnes’s verbosity and existential dread, as he then adds “it’s hard to stop the triggering of one’s self-destructive urges.”
Surprisingly, it’s Barnes’s bizarre lyrics about a simulated reality that stick out the most. “Paranoiac Intervals/Body Dysmorphia” includes the line “I feel like it is such a cruelty to be made self-aware of actualization inside of a simulation” in its transitional part, and is said just quickly enough to make you go “wait, what was that?” Likewise, Barnes sings “every time you take a breath, the simulation’s breathing too” during the shift between “Sophie Calle Private Game” and “Every Person Is a Pussy, Every Pussy Is a Star!” These may be discreet examples, but the most blatant come during the danceable chorus of “Plateau Phase/No Careerism, No Corruption,” where you may find yourself singing along with lines like “if we put our ear to the ceiling, we can hear the government breathing” and “we can hear the simulation wheezing.” Only Kevin Barnes has the seeming ability to make lyrics that sound like something Alex Jones would say seem endearing.
It’s easy to compare White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood to the numerous highs Barnes has reached during his lengthy career, and dismiss it as another decent but not groundbreaking of Montreal album. After all, it doesn’t reinvent of Montreal’s fundamental characteristics, which have almost become predictable at this point: psychedelic artwork by Kevin’s brother David, erudite song titles and lyrics, and Barnes singing about darker themes in a deceptively upbeat tone. However, Barnes has found success within this formula many times before, and his seemingly constant need for a creative outlet seems to explain his project’s constant changes and lack of complacency with styles that have received acclaim. In the shorter view, White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood is an album that largely accomplishes what Barnes laid out in his mission statement regarding extended dance mixes, and it’s pretty remarkable that the same project that started as Barnes with an acoustic guitar is now putting out lengthy EDM tracks. In the end, you’ll be moving along with the beats so often that you’ll forget this is all just a simulation.
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