So you’re Kevin Barnes, the man who’s always been Of Montreal’s main creative impetus. You’re gathering yourself for making album number seventeen since the release, more than twenty years ago, of the band’s debut Cherry Peel. What to do? How to get back into the saddle of a career which has often been feted by critics but less so by the general public?
Simple. You make a being in love album. That’s as opposed to falling, because 2018’s White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood was a falling in love record, a collection of songs based in format on the almost lost concept of pop songs being given extended mixes, realised in practice to varying degrees of satisfaction.
UR FUN is different, not just because Barnes returned to working in a studio for its creation, but more so because from a distance it seems untypically conventional. Writing brevity of sorts is back, there’s a de facto rock tune here (Don’t Let Me Die In America), while he also cites Cyndi Lauper and Janet Jackson as influences.
Rumours of the project’s apparent death by conformity are however, on closer inspection, greatly exaggerated. There’s a clutch of awkward, perception challenging titles – Deliberate Self Harm Ha, Ha; Get God’s Attention By Being An Athi; 20th Century Schizophrenic Reven – whilst lyrically the always-maverick Georgian has chosen to scatter the material with oblique references, from amongst others, the novel Horse Crazy by Gary Indiana, Panamanian pop star El General, 80’s sci-fi movie Liquid Sky and French death-metal group Death Throne.
Even being in love isn’t a straightforward thing, as we find out on Polyaneurism in which the singer reflects on the moral confusion of being one corner of an assenting love triangle, a dilemma which if nothing else re-reveals the band’s knack for producing smart, accessible synth pop. It’s hard to say definitively that this haven is the one in which everyone finds themselves feeling their most comfortable in, but in the yes corner it’s a trick repeated on Peace To All The Freaks, the album’s opener and a flashy dead ringer for at least one of Ariel Pink’s split personalities.
These very modern takes on the sacrifice and confusion of having something you can’t own or control are fine, but UR FUN’s best moments are in what might qualify as romance: the Gypsy That Remains could almost be a modernist Fernando, complete with hotel cabaret keyboards, while You’ve Had Me Everywhere’s first lines are ‘Listening to your heartbeat/realising it’s my heartbeat too’, a pure sounding boy-meets-girlism that feels refreshingly uncomplicated.
Let’s face it, like Kevin Barnes was never going to let someone like a twenty first century Cupid have it their own way. UR FUN has conviction, genuine warmth and is sometimes a fascinating take on one and two way longing – but its lack of a centre means its ambitious dreams aren’t always fulfilled.
