of Montreal’s music is hard to define, given it changes more often than frontman Kevin Barnes’ sequined and feathered outfits during a live show. One album might be heavy on the drum machine and synthesizer, while another showcases Barnes’ best high-pitched Prince wail with more traditional strings and percussion. The Atlanta band boasts a prodigious body of work; in a decade and a half, Barnes and Co. have churned out 10 albums, eight collections and 29 singles and EPs, including their most recent effort, thecontrollersphere (Polyvinyl). Barnes and of Montreal’s two art directors—wife Nina Barnes (a.k.a. geminitactics) and brother David Barnes—will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.
Nina: The mad audacity to name your literary mega project Min Kamp (the same title Adolf Hitler used for his psychotic manifesto) displays an intent to incite controversy or, at least, conversation. Boy, did he! Karl Ove Knausgård‘s mastodon of an autobiographical odyssey absorbed an entire nation—and European continent, for that matter—into its labyrinthine miasma of shameless and unguarded confessions. As with any artistic endeavor of this scope (six volumes and roughly 3,000 pages in total), the literary quality is destined to vary, but for the most part, the prose throughout is simply breathtaking and so brutal in its quest to stay subjective and honest. Along the journey, you experience an incredible range of emotions. It is, in turns, annoying, amusing, touching and elevating. I found myself shouting out aloud to the author, ”Get yourself laid, for heaven’s sake!”
Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcxreA5So6w
