From The Desk Of Of Montreal: Sufjan Stevens

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.

Kevin: I can’t stop listening to Sufjan Stevens’ The Age Of Adz & the All Enlightened People EP. It has become an obsession I don’t want to end. A pure and gritty, beautiful and painful listen. Mr. Stevens stabs me directly in the heart, bringing my own pain to the surface, yet I want him to twist the dagger deeper—and for eternity. I guess because it feels more like a joint suicide than murder, and anyways, we always rise together, martyred and vindicated. Most of the songs run in a length of at least three times the amount of the average pop song, but they never get boring or tedious. Somehow these compositions/productions speak directly to that quadrant of our brains that divines the infinite in the most minute and voiceless elements of our human condition. He is a singular creature, he gives us so much to chew on, and he is without context. What more can one ask for?