★★★★★
Despite a prolific discography that can be accurately categorized as batshit insane (albeit marvelously so), Kevin Barnes's Of Montreal collective has decided to embrace classic rock on their 12th release, Lousy with Sylvianbriar. There are hints of Deerhunter's ramshackle punk sessions from Monomania and Spoon's brand of garage pop strewn throughout, but at its core the album is an unabashed throwback to '60s psych-rock, with Of Montreal aping the posture of revered British Invasion bands like...
- www.slantmagazine.com
2013-10-23
★★★★★
Fine, I'll be the prick and say what everyone's thinking. Look at that fucking artwork. Just look at it. I dare you not to laugh. This is a book you can judge by its cover. The music inside sounds just like the sleeve looks: hackneyed, nauseating, backward-thinking, and dumb. It roars with all the fierceness and edge of a midlife crisis, a sonic mid 40s bachelor pad - walls littered with faded black-light posters, the knee-jerk motorcycle purchase rotting away in the corner...
- thequietus.com
2013-10-16
★★★★★
Credit Kevin Barnes for knowing when he's testing your patience. After last year's Paralytic Stalks, where his flamboyance came across as ho-hum and even his self-absorption sounded strangely obligatory, Barnes changed up his process for Of Montreal's 12th album. He left Athens, Georgia, and decamped to San Francisco to write. Instead of recording by himself, as he has done on almost every Of Montreal album, he assembled a small band of sympathetic performers...
- pitchfork.com
2013-10-11
★★★★★
The fate of most artists isn't burning out or fading away, but to simply carry on existing. Which is not intended by way of criticism Kevin Barnes and Of Montreal, a band that has continued to exist prolifically since 2007's indie/funk/electro/Kraut/confessional masterpiece Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer...
- drownedinsound.com
2013-10-10
★★★★★
Having ridden a white horse onto the stage and performed as his transsexual alter ego Georgie Fruit, it's hard to predict what of Montreal frontman Kevin Barnes will do next. So for the Athens, Georgia band's 12th album, it's not so surprising that the band eschews studio trickery for lyric-driven '70s songcraft with country twangs and lush harmonies...
- www.clashmusic.com
2013-10-10
★★★★★
Since 2007's superlative Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, Kevin Barnes has seemingly taken it upon himself to wage an admirable one-man war on blandness in pop music. This has resulted
- recordcollectormag.com
2013-10-10
★★★★★
In 1965, Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited changed the landscape of music for the next decade. From folk to psych, rock to country, all sorts of sounds blurred together, creating a free-for-all music scene that persisted into the early '70s. Artists questioned everything following that year's Newport Folk Festival -- If Dylan could go electric, what rules were left? Nearly half a century later, that question's moot, especially for Kevin Barnes and of Montreal ...
- consequenceofsound.net
2013-10-11
★★★★★
Who could have expected this? For a band who are seemingly okay with prioritizing quantity over quality, it's certainly impressive that Lousy With Sylvianbriar, Of Montreal's 12th studio album, is the band's best in a long, long time. Yes, some of the band's most popular material comes in the form of dark pop songs that soundtrack Outback Steakhouse commercials, and their past few efforts have been sub-par...
- www.musicomh.com
2013-10-10
★★★★★
Tweet Pseudo-Blast from the Past This twelfth album from the famously eclectic Georgian band of Montreal begins, appropriately, in medias res: twangy guitars charge into an upbeat melody on the straightforward, rocking opener "Fugitive Air." Lousy with Sylvianbriar swings the band's lengthy catalogue back around to its roots and back in time, eschewing the glitzy glam-pop of False Priest and Skeletal Lamping for a more organic, guitar-driven and approachable sound without losing any of the...
- www.mxdwn.com
2013-10-10
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