Of Montreal

Athens, Georgia based indiepop band associated with the Elephant 6 Recording Company; fronted by Kevin Barnes and named after a particularly bad breakup that happened when he went to go visit a long-distance girlfriend in, strangely enough, Montreal. This inauspicious beginning is more prominent on the band's first two LPs (Bedside Drama is, in fact, devoted entirely to one couple's dissolving relationship) but in the midst of all their sugary-sweet melodies and blissful harmonies is a very real sense of longing and wistfulness.

And then Kevin writes songs about baby spiders reincarnated as intergalactic horses and happy nuns and magnificently tall invisible trees. It all balances out in the end.

Discography:

• Cherry Peel (8/1997, remastered and rereleased 7/1999)
• The Bird Who Ate The Rabbit's Flower EP (10/1997, rereleased with added material as The Bird Who Continues To Eat The Rabbit's Flower 1/1999)
• Nicki Lighthouse 7" single (1998)
• The Bedside Drama: A Petite Tragedy (6/1998)
• The Gay Parade (1/1999)
• A Celebration of H. Hare 7" single (Happy Happy Birthday To Me Single of the Month Club, 2000)
• Horse and Elephant Eatery (No Elephants Allowed): The Singles and Songles Album (4/2000)
• Archibald of the Balding Sparrows 7" single (2000)
• The Girl From NY Volume 12 7" single (Kindercore Singles Club, 2000)
• The Early 4-Track Recordings (1/2001)
• Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse (4/2001)
• Inside A Room Full Of Treasures A Black Pygmi Horse's Head Pops Up Like A Periscope 7" single (2001)
• An Introduction to Of Montreal (compilation of earlier material released only on vinyl, 2001)
• Then Who Will Protect Big Oil, Our Children? (tour-only, 2002)
• Aldhil's Arboretum (9/2002)

7" discography help from ofmontreal.net

2002 saw the release of two new Of Montreal albums. The first is a tour-only CD entitled Then Who Will Protect Big Oil, Our Children? and featuring, as all Of Montreal albums beginning with (and including) The Gay Parade, the artwork of David Barnes, Kevin's brother. This album is a collection of odds and ends similar to Horse and Elephant Eatery, and sees the release of several songs for the first time in a non-vinyl format. Of particular interest are Inside a Room Full of Treasures a Black Pygmi Horse's Head Pops Up Like a Periscope, released earlier on a 7 inch single, and Girl From NYC, in which the narrator writes "a letter on the flight home, which evolved into a love poem." As an album in whole, it doesn't quite reach the level of their more focused releases but remains nonetheless a good collection of hard to obtain songs.

The second album released by Of Montreal in 2002 was their fifth full-length studio album, Aldhil's Arboretum¹. Far from the 22 track, conceptual (yet brilliant) splurge that was Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies, Aldhil's Arboretum sees of Montreal return to a more straight-ahead, 60's rock and roll style. The level of musicianship remains high, drums crashing, guitar riffing and bass rumbling along in style, but many missed the more album-centric focus of their two previous studio releases, The Gay Parade and Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies. With that said, Aldhil's Arboretum remains one of Of Montreal's most accessible studio releases and where the zaniness was writ large on their previous albums, here it is more subtle but no less magical.

Therefore, to add to the previous discography:

• Then Who Will Protect Big Oil, Our Children?(Tour CD, 2002)
• Aldhil's Arboretum (9, 2002)

[1] - a title hinted at several times in earlier releases, the aforementioned 7 inch Pygmi single including the words "Aldhil's Arboretum - at last one with no head", etched on the run-out groove in a style not seen since the days of the Smiths.