of Montreal perform in Chicago, September 2011. Photo: Daniel Boczarski/Redferns
When you hear the first few notes of “Wintered Debts,” of Montreal‘s newest studio song, it’s tempting to think Kevin Barnes’ circus-disco band have gone soft on us and dropped the strange, aborted the disco, in favor of a Sgt.Peppers/White Album-era Beatles direction. But not to worry: This is seven minutes of pure Barnes weirdness, structured in three parts. The first four-and-a-half minutes finds Barnes discussing his bitterness towards his mother’s religion and battling ego-sickness. That then dissolves into a spacey haze of orchestral sounds, which merges back into a little piano piece with Barnes reflecting on how the “child of our struggle is free” and that love has blossomed with a prisoner. We have no idea what this all means, but here’s hoping this is a new, experimental direction that will surface on the band’s new studio album, Paralytic Stalks, due in early 2012.
Update: “Wintered Debts” will be on Paralytic Stalks but is not the lead single, a rep for of Montreal tells Hive.
