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’m reading Naked Lunch for the first time. I’ve always kind of been afraid of it for some reason, almost like I imagined it would somehow take over my brain and turn me into a reptile’s parasitic semen vapor or something approximating that. I read Queer and Junkie as a teenager and a few months ago read Cities Of The Red Night. I’ve loved them all. They have liberated me, artistically, emotionally and spiritually. Naked Lunch was extremely controversial at the time of its initial publication in the U.S., and there were numerous attempts by state governments to have it banned. Reading it, I can totally see why it made conservative America shit its pants. Its wildly vivid descriptions of psychotic, anarchic cartoon sexuality filled the Glenn Becks of the 1950s with a terror never before conceived of. In the wake of McCarthyism and a crippling wave of right-wing conformity, I’m actually surprised William S. Burroughs wasn’t sentenced to death for writing it, along with anyone who dared to read it. Thank god cooler heads prevailed, and as a result of its absorption into the universal mind, the human race moved forward one big step toward homo-luminosity.
—Photo by John Minihan
