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Posted: 04 Feb 2014 05:45 AM PST
Though they’re probably best known for of Montreal’s high-gloss psych-pop and Mates of State’s irresistible choruses, Polyvinyl Records have been responsible for some of the more singular and engaging records in all of indie rock. From Braid’s groundbreaking Frame and Canvas to the bounding bash-and-shout of Japandroids, Polyvinyl has always had a clear instinct for the Instant Classic. Now you can catch up on what you’ve missed: More than 30 of the label’s titles are on sale for $4.99 or less, now through February 18. And to get you started, download Polyvinyl’s free 16-track sampler, with songs from Generationals, Sonny & the Sunsets, the Dodos, and more.
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2013 | Polyvinyl Records
Given that the subtext — and, often, the text — of nearly every Of Montreal song is madness, you can't expect rational career moves from bandleader Kevin Barnes. When 2010's relatively accessible False Priest — the closest this psychedelic pop miscreant may get to a crossover — couldn't capture the mainstream, the Athens, Georgia, firebrand fired back with 2012's tangibly furious Paralytic Stalks. Instead of Priest's alt-R&B cameos from Janelle Monáe and ... Solange Knowles, Stalks paid tribute to blatantly discordant classical composer Krzysztof Penderecki.
Now Barnes spins another 180. Written during "a self-imposed isolation experiment" in San Francisco earlier this year, Lousy with Sylvianbriar is, according to Barnes, influenced by Sylvia Plath, Neil Young, the Flying Burrito Brothers and, um, the Grateful Dead. The typically control-crazed Barnes — who played all but the earliest Of Montreal discs mostly by himself — here recorded onto tape much of the album with his live band playing alongside in real time, without the computers that made the last several albums possible.
Of Montreal has for years played hard and tight in concert, and they do the same here, although with far more restraint. Sylvianbriar boasts more than the usual number of ballads, like the delicate "Sirens of Your Toxic Spirit," which recalls the Stones of "Lady Jane"; or "Amphibian Days," which suggests that band's "Wild Horses"; or the similarly pastoral "Raindrop in My Skull," where Rebecca Cash of fellow Athens band John French & the Bastilles takes the vocal reins.
Where there were once synths, there are oodles of guitars — wistful acoustics, noodling electrics and even a few weeping steel guitars. But Barnes hasn't curtailed his thesaurus-enabled polysyllabic lyrical spews one iota, and although these band arrangements are in the context of his hyper-kinetic catalog somewhat laid back, his love songs to the bitter and bruised still move like tigers on Vaseline: Of Montreal cannot help but be more Bowie than Burrito Brothers, and that's just fine.
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Polyvinyl Records
Hissing Fauna is the third fantastic album in a row from Athens, GA, pop band Of Montreal, but this time the band departs from the previous formula of '60s psychedelic storytelling for more confessional lyrics set with a DayGlo new wave flare. Bandleader Kevin Barnes sings of his sad-sack adventures in a breathy, eager voice with falsetto used liberally for faux-sassy ironic commentary. Find him telling tales of Norway as an electronics-only ... Talking Heads ("A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger"), rejecting a suitor who lacks "soul power" in an indie pop monologue ("Bunny Ain't No Kind of Rider") and looking for a guru in the church of DFA Records ("Gronlandic Edit"). Put on the 12-minute "The Past Is a Grotesque Animal," a goth-tinged and psychosexually-charged dance track, and let Barnes take over the room with his unique, head-trip approach to stereo production.
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2012 | Polyvinyl Records
Japandroids' Celebration Rock begins and ends with fireworks — not the county-fair variety, but the cheap, barely legal kind you set off in the woods with friends and then run away, giggling uncontrollably. The sound sets the tone for a sizzling, incandescent burst of a record, one that conjoins punk-rock fist-aloft solidarity and weepy heartland-rock sentimentality in one 35-minute-long bro-hug. Expect a lot of sloppy back-patting, acres of generous sentiment and a ... surplus of the sorts of lines perfectly calibrated to shout joyously in the face of your closest friends. "We're lashing out at evil's sway tonight," for example. Or "Don't we have anything to live for?/ Well, of course we do, but until they come true/ We're drinking." It's a record that demands to be heard, and loved, in groups.
Which doesn't make it mindless. As is usually the case with especially fierce good cheer, Celebration Rock is borne of desperation: The two-man Japandroids were minutes away from breaking apart, wilting under a lack of momentum, when they recorded its eight gasping, suitcase-compact anthems. Lead singer Brian King nearly died (perforated ulcer, an ailment about as far from "carefree rock 'n' roll" as you can get). A scan of the lyrics, excised from endorphins, unearths some fairly dark thoughts: "It's a lifeless life/ With no fixed address to give/ But you're not mine to die for anywhere, so I must live," King screams on "The House That Heaven Built." With just a guitar and a drum kit, meanwhile, the lifelong friends generate enough heat and momentum for an entire E Street band. Songs surge forward recklessly, explode, and then plow forward again. The relentless hurtling mirrors the philosophy expressed in the lyrics: Embrace life with the energy of an over-eager Labrador Retriever, no matter what it throws your way.
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Polyvinyl Records
A sad and funny and moving account of what it means to have a quarterlife crisis. Two twenty-something Canucks careen around Vancouver in the rain, missing ex-girlfriends, worrying about the rent, getting nostalgic for the old days when just getting drunk was enough. "You can keep tomorrow / After tonight we're not gonna need it," they insist, and they play like they're telling the truth: Brian King strikes his guitar like he's ... burning through matches, David Prowse fist-fights his drum kit, distortion crackles with pent-up energy. Somewhere in all that noise is the sound of growing up — restlessly, reluctantly. "We used to dream," they sing, "Now we worry about dying."
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Polyvinyl Records
Some Racing, Some Stopping opens with a steady humming organ, a twinkle of guitars and — shooting upward from the darkness — a soaring, pleading vocal. It's dramatic and it's perfect, the kind of prologue bigger bands break their backs trying to create. The second record from Illinois trio Headlights is full of casual beauty, moments of pop elegance that arrive with natural grace rather than with blunt force and blaring fanfare. Some... Racing was recorded in a farmhouse outside Champaign, IL, and the songs it contains are, appropriately, airy and utterly cloudless. Vocalists Tristan Wraight and Erin Fein sing like they're sharing secrets: their voices are low and cottony, gliding gently over lacy guitars and blinking vibraphone. Even when the tempo escalates — "April 2" is shoved along by a walloping backbeat — the voices remain subdued.
The songs themselves are shimmering marvels; they don't hurtle so much as hydroplane, speeding forward a few inches above the ground. Fein's voice is light and cherry-flavored, and she drizzles it slowly across the length of each composition. Some Racing is the perfect tonic for fans of the small statement, a record for people who wished the world was full of more groups like The Field Mice. It's music that's meek but gorgeous.
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2010 | Polyvinyl Records
Love Is All are at their most charming when they transform nerve-wracking anxiety into perky post-punk rave-ups. They've calmed down a bit on their third full-length, Two Thousand And Ten Injuries, but their songs still burst with manic, joyful noise. The album, written and recorded while the Swedish quintet had no label, is their most playful to date. Left to their own devices, the group have expanded their artistic range, yielding both ... sunny Turtles-esque psychedelia (on "Kungen") and Slits-like punk-reggae (on "False Pretense").
As always, the band's songs showcase the unique voice of Josephine Olausson, whose trebly yelp conveys as much self-deprecating humor as jittery angst. She can sound vulnerable and delicate, but most often she comes across like a tiny person standing up with determination against something rather enormous — even if it's just the anxieties percolating in her head. The band's lyrics and music are small in scale, giving voice to brief moments of panic without losing perspective or blowing them too far out of proportion. Even when the tracks get especially uptight and antsy, as on "Less Than Thrilled" and the bold single "Repetition", the band never get bleak or overbearing. Instead, the combination of Olausson's oddball wit and the band's bright guitar tones and springy beats maintain a tone of world-weary levity throughout the record.
Whereas many of the band's older songs leaned hard on the rhythm section for hooks, they've become more confident with melody, resulting in particularly hummable tunes in the rowdy opener "Bigger Bolder" and the lilting album highlight "Never Now." They also sound more assured on relatively relaxed cuts like "A Side In A Bed" and "Take Your Time", allowing for moments of prettiness without losing too much momentum. Love Is All have evolved into a more well-rounded band without sacrificing a trace of their distinct identity — they've loosened up, but thankfully, they're still tightly wound.
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2008 | Polyvinyl Records
Any good concept album has a compelling character at its core, and Skeletal Lamping is no exception. Protagonist Georgie Fruit isn't just any transgender middle-aged black man — he has undergone multiple sex changes, making him the perfect alter ego for charismatic and chameleonic Of Montreal frontman Kevin Barnes, whose musical persona is capricious, unsettled and over-the-top. And also very horny. Skeletal Lamping is packed with blush-worthy come-ons draped in imitation-Prince squeals. Georgie, ... throughout the album, comes across alternately as a savvy bedroom connoisseur and a disposable plaything for the sexually curious. He's a product of the disco era, and his after-bar stories are set to limber bass lines and a driving beat. But the quieter moments reveal his insecurity, his damaged self-esteem and contemplation of yet another surgery.
Despite the personal crisis that shapes the album's narrative, Barnes, perhaps unsurprisingly, never loses his playful side. In "For Our Elegant Caste," for instance, he refers to Georgie's transformation as "a freaky permutation, something like Voltron," making clear that Georgie's stints under the knife didn't sacrifice his sense of humor.
As they have graduated and mutated from modest indie pop to extravagant, massive glam-pop, Of Montreal's vision has become grander, and their approach more intricate. An album like Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? with its kaleidoscopic sound palette (and album cover) piled sounds and ideas and moods and approaches in elegant layers. Skeletal Lamping takes it even farther, with results that require patience. But with its majestic three-part falsetto harmonies and engrossing narrative, it's patience well spent.
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Polyvinyl Records
Coming off their highly praised seventh album, the 2004 psych-pop masterpiece Satanic Panic in the Attic, Of Montreal was confronted with a (not unwelcome) problem: how to follow-up? The surprising solution: synths and cheeky dance smarts. Unapologetic Elephant 6 harmonies and kooky conceptualism remain, but The Sunlandic Twins is less Brian Wilson, more Afrobeat boogie and Can propulsion smacked wacky by a post-Eno David Byrne. "The Party's Crashing Us" is the essence ... of this: leader Kevin Barnes 'too-smart-for-pop verbosity turns sincere for love while a dozen disco melodies vie for space around the bass. They all end up winning.
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2007 | Polyvinyl Records
Architecture in Helsinki went for a different mood on their third studio album, and you can hear it from the moment Cameron Bird starts spitting lyrics (rather than singing them in his usual sweet, wavering falsetto) on the cowbell-driven banger "Red Turned White." The Australian twee-poppers have grown a little less adorable, but they're also a lot more fun. 2005's In Case We Die theatrically wandered, like an epic saga performed on ... a children's stage. The instrumentation was grand-scale — as if the teacher had insisted that everyone get a chance to play the trumpet and harp and violin. It sure was fun, but it's tough to call yourself a rock band when your highest decibel levels are reserved for the Sesame Street shout-along of "It's 5!"
With Places Like This, Architecture radiates a block party vibe — their songs are both less complicated and a little more wild. They've even tossed their usual strings and instead funk things up with steel drums and congas, sounding as if they've taken their dancefloor cues from Talking Heads and the B-52's. (Bird and the band's female members even conjure a decent Fred Schneider-and-the girls impression for the "hey-ya-ya" refrains on "Hold Music.") That's a pretty good way to get people to stop calling you precious and start shaking their stuff.
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2011 | Polyvinyl Records
After releasing two albums and multiple singles equally in love with girl-group harmonies and cassette-tape fidelities, the Vivian Girls decided it was time for a change. On Share The Joy, producer and Woods member Jarvis Taveniere turns down the static and sharpens the focus. As if that wasn't enough of a transformation, the record kicks opens with a six-minute tune ("The Other Girls") that has little in common with the loose, ... punchy pop people have come to expect. Despite these cosmetic changes, though, the Girls haven't forgotten their roots — the one-two punch of "Sixteen Ways" and "Take It As It Comes" are on-point homages to the girl groups they strive to emulate, while "Lake House" shows they haven't forgotten how to make an enjoyable ruckus — they're just seeing what else they're capable of. It's not as radical as, say, changing their name to the Vivian Women, but it's clear from Share The Joy that these girls are growing up.
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2010 | Polyvinyl Records
Surviving the hype-mongering early stages for a buzz band can be a treacherous thing. Fortunately, the Missouri quartet Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin have the chops, and the wherewithal, to withstand the buzz's fading light. Their third full-length, Let It Sway, is a power-pop crowd-pleaser, rippling with shout-alongs and hand-clap revivals. "Banned (By The Man)" is as straightforward and charming as they get — give some credit goes to production guru ... and Death Cab For Cutie guitarist Chris Walla, whose sharp and steady hand gives this album the same gleeful, exploding joy as so many of the other indie pop bands (Ra Ra Riot, The Thermals, Tegan and Sara) he's helped shepherd in recent years. Someone Loves You Boris Yeltsin are lucky and good. Sometimes you need both.
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2011 | Polyvinyl Records
After 16 years, 11 albums and numerous personnel changes, San Francisco's Deerhoof are coming of age. Far from slowing down, on Deerhoof Vs. Evil their itchy, primary-colored avant-rock is fuelled on compressed energy. Their ball-of-lightning sound fizzles with disorienting production tics — flashes of dub, electronic percussion and dropped-in abstract interludes, which throw weird angular shapes beneath bassist Satomi Matsuzaki's ludicrously catchy stream-of-consciousness vocal hooks. Twin guitarists John Dieterich and Ed Rodriguez dominate ... the mix, equally comfortable with delicate Spanish guitar trills ("No One Asked To Dance"), kora-like repetitions ("Must Fight Current"), overdriven Keith Richards licks ("Secret Mobilization") and thick, dueling power chords. Greg Saunier's drums — informed by both house and hip-hop — clatter and worry the music along. "The Merry Barracks" — written, according to Satomi, to overcome her fear of low bass frequencies from cars — riffs on a glam rock bass line stomp; instrumental "Let's Dance the Jet" with its pungent, soupy electric organ, seems lifted from the soundtrack for a Greek film; Brazilian Tropicalia lurks behind the stream-of-consciousness "Must Fight Current." Rapturous closer "Almost Everyone, Almost Always" points to a parallel universe in which the band is a more synth-dominated outfit. The huge-sounding Deerhoof Vs. Evil was entirely self-recorded and produced in a variety of practice spaces and basements. Evildoers of the world, be very afraid.
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2004 | Polyvinyl Records
If Braid hadn't split in 1999, there's no telling the millions they would be counting in the mainstremo era. Frame and Canvas is a near-perfect distillation of late-'90s emo, a mass of fist pumps, slow kisses and deep sighs. "Never Will Come For Us," in which Chris Broach and Bob Nanna trade heart-sick barbs, and "A Dozen Roses," a too-fast ballad (or too-slow rave-up) about — what else? — rejection set to ... a Polaroid-perfect guitar progression, were both tailor-made for crushed-out mix-tapes. Your sister loves this album, and so should you.
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2010 | Polyvinyl Records
Right — the Prince stuff. Let's start there. "Our Riotous Defects," track two of False Priest, Kevin Barnes's 11th album either with or as Of Montreal, channels Prince in a way that's even more direct than usual. Over the last few Of Montreal albums, Barnes hasn't been shy about his desire to come as close as possible to that sound and standard while still remaining his weirdo, hyperkinetic, Athens, Georgia-bred indie-pop self. ... But he's seldom imitated him so directly as he does on "Defects" — specifically, the verses are done in an exacting, precise imitation of the spoken coda of "If I Was Your Girlfriend," from Sign 'O' the Times.
Especially on Sign, Prince was entirely comfortable tweaking his own persona — playing it up here, undercutting it slightly there. Nothing about the "Girlfriend" coda, in which Prince's voice is slightly sped up, is un-self-aware. But Barnes's use of that nattering tone is utilized in the service of a bunch of lines that up the self-awareness factor a few notches: "I know it's fucked, but just before we got together, I even hooked up with one of your cousins just to feel somehow closer to you. 'Cause I knew, like, you guys were best friends and you talked every day, and it was thrilling to touch something that had touched you." Sure, he's singing to the "crazy girl" of the chorus ("I supported your stupid little blog, got a Bowflex," he recounts, bewildered), but he's also singing, as a listener, to Prince himself, about hearing yourself in another person's song — or of wanting to get inside that song and make it your own.
Jon Brion helped produce False Priest; two songs feature Janelle Monáe; one has Solange Knowles. "Thick R&B influence" were Barnes's words to Pitchfork. It's not a surprise to see Brion in that company — his work with Fiona Apple got the attention of a lot of R&B fans even before he worked with Kanye West on Late Registration in 2005. But Brion brings a buffeting style that meshes well with Barnes's hyperkineticism. The last Of Montreal album, 2008's Skeletal Lamping, was dense and jagged and sharp-edged; False Priest goes down smoothly without diluting any of what makes Of Montreal it billowing, weird self.
But what Brion really brings out — and I now feel foolish for not hearing it earlier — is how very high-school-musical Of Montreal is. That makes sense: The band was spawned from Elephant 6's collectivist ethos, which Stars and Arcade Fire seem to have picked up, and those groups have a similar gang-putting-on-a-show aspect as well. Of course, the reason I feel foolish noticing this now is that Of Montreal are always in costume and makeup. They use stage props, for Christ's sake. Their last album was narrative about Georgie Fruit, a black transsexual character that hybridizes earlier, more unaffectedly heroic rock archetypes from Bowie on out.
Archetypes and icons are Barnes's lyrical preoccupation. (The False Priest itself is an archetype — think of Jimmy Swaggart begging forgiveness of his sins.) "I thought she was my Annie Hall, or at least Ali MacGraw," he sings on "Famine Affair," which despite its Sly Stone-tweaking title could have been on a Blondie record. "How can I trust my fractious heart/ When I know I have the enemy gene?" he and Monáe ask together on "Enemy Gene." (Rather than showing off, Monáe slips easily and well into a helpmate role both here and on "Defects.") There's always something askew in his universe, though he's happy to dance around it — and indeed, the music sounds spryer than it has since 2005's The Sunlandic Twins.
"Enemy Gene" is lovely, almost Christmassy pop in early Todd Rundgren mode — and Barnes has a lot in common with Rundgren. Both are smart, and smart-alecky, multi-instrumentalist studio rats with a taste for R&B and the off-kilter. Bringing Brion into the mix just makes it more apparent. The squee-sliding synths that climax "Hydra Fancies" are the kind of touch you'd expect from Something/Anything?; on an earlier Of Montreal album they might seem harsher. Here they fizz with delight.
Martin may sound a bit silly singing, "You look like a playground to me, playa," on "Sex Karma," his duet with Knowles the younger. But his weirdo take on R&B really does groove when that's what he's aiming for. "Girl Named Hello" is a bustling disco track — it could have come out on P&P around 1980 — that features Barnes doing a few voices (curling falsetto, absent-minded rasp) to make it sound all the more offhanded. Then there's "Like a Tourist," the album's other big Prince swipe — the wide-swinging drum track effectively channels Graffiti Bridge while the haughty, throaty spoken stuff is closer to the snide parts of "Sexuality." I almost expect Barnes to say, "What? No flash again?" But on this album, that wouldn't be the case at all.
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2011 | Polyvinyl Records
Brooklyn-based nu-gaze quartet Asobi Seksu have, on their fifth album, worked out both what they're best at, and when to stretch. Long-recognized as being in thrall to the sonic textures of My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins (and proudly displaying album artwork by legendary 4AD in-house designer Vaughan Oliver), on Flourescence they purvey those textures beautifully while simultaneously leavening them with a host of outside influences — from '60s girl-group pop to ... unabashed tempo-mangling Prog. If they've occasionally stuttered since their 2006 breakthrough Citrus, they're now in thrilling voice again. "Fluorescence" flickers with florid genius.
Yuki Chikudate's high-pitched coos assert themselves over busy, blistering arrangements that are loaded with treated guitars and squalling keyboards, while the rhythm section rustles up energy to match Animal Collective or the Flaming Lips. "Trails" imagines Karen O and Kevin Shields competing for dominance, but Chikudate's blend of stridency and innocence is a beacon through the layers, and something that could have been cacophonous ends up mighty catchy. "My Baby" skips along on stop-start beats and shivering sonic sidebars before exploding into euphoria; "Perfectly Crystal" reboots classic shoegazing tropes until they gleam with new life. The album's centerpiece is "Leave the Drummer Out There" which glides from hectic to frenetic, then shape-shifts into contrasting phases and moods with gravitas that wouldn't shame early Genesis. It's perhaps as a counterbalance that "Sighs" is as sweet as Blondie's chirpier side, but by "Pink Light" the band is reaffirming their trippier, endlessly echoing motifs.
Dream-pop isn't in short supply these days, but Asobi Seksu (colloquial Japanese for "playful sex") thrive through a mix of exuberance and guile. Their fusion of charm and chaos isn't easy to achieve but always sounds fluid and sparkling. Everything they've absorbed from their idols pours out as bright light.
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