Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes spent a good portion of his childhood making music by himself in his bedroom. Over 13 albums in two decades, he’s always liked the notion of living inside his own musical world, shut out from mainstream culture. So how to explain the often outrageous performer who shows up on stage in feather boas, wings and facepaint while simulating activities that might make Lady Gaga do a double-take?
Blame it on David Bowie, early Genesis, Kate Bush and other theatrical performers with huge artistic ambitions who crept into the bubble Barnes’ had shaped in the early ’90s with other members of the Elephant 6 collective in Athens, Ga. – where Neutral Milk Hotel and the Olivia Tremor Control were based, among others. Unlike those bands, Barnes took his admiration for those artists’ visual extravagance to the stage, even though he didn’t have a budget to pull it off. But he did have a creative foil in his brother David, a visual artist.
“I didn’t just want to show up in street clothes and knock out the songs,” he says. “I wanted to incorporate my brother once I made the first record (Of Montreal’s ‘Cherry Peel’ in 1997) and do something artistic and incorporate other aspects of our creative interests: film, theater, dada-ism. We didn’t have money early on, so we put together whatever we could get at dollar stores and put a little imagination into it. Now that we generate more money, we can put more into it. I wanted Of Montreal to become an art collective within itself: People creating on nonmusical levels, creating an immersive, vibrant, psychedelic, experience — a real happening.”
Barnes realized a lot of his ambitions on recent tours, which included simulations of a country-western barroom brawl, a black-and-white movie from the ’40s, centaurs running wild and Barnes “getting hung from the gallows by John McCain-looking figures” and “impersonating a dirty bishop getting my feet whipped by sexy men.”
It’s all a way of diverting attention from the sometimes dire and deeply personal subject matter of Barnes’ songs, which address isolation, depression and despair by coating it in bright Day-Glo colors and effervescent arrangements, a hallmark of Of Montreal’s latest album, “Aureate Gloom” (Polyvinyl).
“If I’m going through something difficult in my personal life, I focus my energy on the creative process and shut off the part of my mind that says you can’t say that out loud,” he says. “But if you put it in a song, it doesn’t seem as much of a crime. John Lennon with ‘Plastic Ono Band,’ Leonard Cohen – they made very intimate, confessional records, and those types of songs touch me the most. It can feel reckless, dangerous on a certain level to expose yourself that way. But I’ve resigned myself to using music as a form of therapy. It has to be connected to my personal life, and there can’t be filters, there has to be exposure.”
But Barnes says he dislikes music that turns personal drama into a dirge, which is why his albums often sound so deceptively upbeat, a swirl of glam, psychedelia, rock, even early disco. “Music that is melancholy and minor key is kind of boring to me,” he says. “Somber songs dealing with heavy adult themes – I just wouldn’t want to write something in E minor to illustrate that. I listen to mostly Afro-beat music, music full of life, vibrance. Musically, I don’t want my albums to feel like a soundtrack to the lyrics, but a contrast or counterpoint.”
Each Of Montreal album has its own character and sound, in part because the lineup is a revolving door besides Barnes, and also because the singer prefers it that way. “I don’t bring any baggage from the previous album into the next one,” he says. “I like to start over each time and filter in whatever it is I’m interested in, listening to or obsessing over at the time. That the records sound drastically different is exciting to me. Each time I set out to make something that doesn’t sound like Of Montreal.”
Further setting Barnes apart is that his music is so deeply rooted in a different time, a mish-mash of influences that pre-date the MTV era that he manages to make sound fresh. “When I was growing up in the ’90s, mainstream music was so terrible – grunge and all that aggression you heard on the radio and MTV,” he says. “The ’60s sounded a bit more feminine to me, aesthetically it felt more gentle. I wanted something more poetic and mysterious and (artists such as) Ray Davies, Brian Wilson and John Lennon really spoke to me. I felt more connected to that generation. I have a weird hang-up about contemporary culture. It’s easier for me to romanticize something whose time is past. It feels lame to be on bandwagon, to be part of a trend, which is why I’m more into things that are dead.”
Also worth hearing
Tweedy: Father-son combo Jeff and Spencer Tweedy released a fine debut album last year, “Sukierae,” that confronted themes of family and death with homespun immediacy and little decoration. With a five-piece band, Tweedy does the songs justice in concert, and a few Wilco covers have been popping up on the set lists. 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday at Vic Theatre, 3145 N. Sheffield, $44; jamusa.com
Greg Kot co-hosts “Sound Opinions” at 8 p.m. Friday and 11 a.m. Saturday on WBEZ-FM 91.5.
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When: 7 p.m. March 13
Where: Metro, 3730 N. Clark St.
Tickets: $25; metrochicago.com