Customer Reviews

Coquelito Asleep in the Poppies

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the single most amazing piece of physical matter in the known universe. Listening to the wonderfully pleasurable music on this CD makes me so very giddy. Not only are the lyrics so delightfully superb, but the quality of the music is just so grand. If you are a fan of happiness, I would suggest that you buy several copies of this CD. And oh, they couldn't just stop at an incredible CD, but they have to add a booklet of drawings to go along with each song and a fold out poster containing all the lyrics, making it franticly simple to memorize every single word. i just sit around in ecstasy and listen to the absurdly awesome piano opus that flies for 18 minutes at the end of the glorious masterpiece that is this CD. The quality of all the music makes me pass out and have lovely dreams of beautiful things. And I love the wide range of musical instruments: everything from guitars, pianos, cellos, violins, clarinets, and xylophones, to toy pianos and voices through swinging hoses. I can't express how much this CD has made the world a more pleasant place to have to exist in. I'll just suggest that you purchase it, and give it a test drive. Regret is thoroughly unlikely.

dear kevin (Kevin is the mastermind behind of montreal): please sit down (in a room) and write a book of odd verse, chid-like stories and bitter sweet post-pop quirks; your story telling skills are a true marble, and your sense of the lovely is.. good good. then come back to us, and start writing again those pop hooks with late 60's production and dreamland tim burton meets the powerpuff girls lyrics;

this album, unlike the oh-so-good gay parade, is a talking and singing book; no indie pop easy listening values here, folks; some tracks are unlistenable as songs, and some tracks fall into olivia tremor control-like noise interludes; if the gay parade was the neutral milk hotel for 4 year olds, this one is OTC, reading winnie the pooh in the lavatory. file under: odd experiment gone too book-like.

Words are not sufficient to describe the glorious poppy weirdness of Of Montreal's "Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse." While this band is on the second string of Elephant 6 bands, it's among the best ones -- upbeat, surreal, whimsical and gloriously peculiar.

It opens with the perky piano-pop "Good Morning Mr. Endminton" and follows up with the tinkling "Peacock Parasols" and eerie acoustic-guitar "Look at the Bell." The perky bouncy pop angle is taken care of by songs like the rollicking "Introduction to Isabell" and the bizarre, funny "Rose Robert," and the sparkling instrumental number "Coquelicot, Claude and Lecithin Dance Aboad the Ocean Liner," which is only a minute long. "Mimi Merlot" is one of the most entertaining songs, ending with the unique line, "Mimi Merlot you're the most convincingly non-fictitious character that I know."

But chirrupy pop is not all Of Montreal has to offer. Quieter songs are mixed in as well, like the surreally romantic "Let's Do Everything for the First Time," the sweet string ballad "It's a Very Starry Night," and the sprawling, mood-swinging piano-led epic -- clocking in at eighteen minutes -- "Hopeless Opus or the Great Battle of the Unfriendly Ridiculous," which even offers a nudge-wink homage to fellow band Marshmallow Coast.

There are also a couple of mildly experimental songs -- "Upon Settling on the Frozen Island, Lecithin Presents Claude and Coquelicot with his Animal Creations" has nothing but women's voices cooing "Oh yes! Oh yes!" with men replying mournfully "Oh no! Oh no!" There are slurps, silly high-pitched singing, wails, and whispers about pornographic mags. "Lecithin's Tale of a DNA Experiment That Went Horribly Awry" is half-song, half spoken story about horrifying hyena-cicada hybrids that eat little children. "Events Leading Up to the Collapse of Detective Dulllight" is a gloriously warped, surreal take on murder mysteries.

There's a concept album feel to "Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies," although I'm not sure if it is really meant to tell a story. Whether it does or not, it effectively serves as a door to another world where butterflies sing, cats walk upright, robotic aquatic bees are developed, and filing cabinets are found in a detective's brain. There's nothing even remotely normal about it, and that's what makes it fun -- it's like a wild, crazy, colorful dream burned into a CD.

At times the songwriting sounds a bit gruesome -- after all, one song is about monstrous hybrids eating the children of a village. Or rather, it would be gruesome if it weren't so funny. At times the songs sound like they were put together from random surrealist images, like "Let's reminisce of our first dance together/along the ocean floor/Your dress was made of egg shells/My hair was in a pompadour."

Kevin Barnes has a lovely voice. Well, it doesn't get too much of a workout, but it's pleasant and mellow, and he sounds like he's having a great time. Moreover, he does the spoken parts well. Backing him up is Dotti Alexander, who does a glorious job on keyboards; Jamie Huggins who does some solid drums, and a variety of colorful instruments that add to the fun, dreamy atmosphere.

"Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse" is one of those albums that is completely divorced from the mundane and dreary. Fun, upbeat, bizarre and utterly engaging from beginning to end. This deserves to be a classic among indierock/pop bands.

Of all of the Elephant 6 related bands, this is the best, with this album besting all of them. I've owned this record for a couple years, and after the first three listens I got a little fed up with it. The music is jarring, and the chord progressions are discordant. But then it gets better and better with each listen, just like the best records you've ever owned. The tunes start to grow on you, and soon enough, rather than being jarring and dischordant, Coquelicot becomes stimulating like a head rush - the music begins to fit together and the album accordians itself into this condensed package of pop and harmony.

Think early Pink Floyd - Bike song, or The Beachboys - Bicycle Rider. Or maybe even mix the two together. If that's not helpful, just think Beachboys Pet Sounds, but on some wild hallucinogenic drug.

You might buy Of Montreal's Gay Parade before you get this, though I did not. If you have the option of listening to any song by Of Montreal first, find "My Favorite Boxer" - its on Gay Parade.

What is the world coming to, when a few upstarts can box some non-sensical melodies in direct juxtaposition with one-act plays that lead nowhere? Where-ever it is, that's where I want to be. Never before has one album so revolutionized for me the idea of what music really is. Before I listened to Coquelicot, I assumed that for a song to be considered music, it had to have several integral parts. After listening to this album, I have now decided that deliberately leaving one of these parts out (yes, even the music) can lead you on the road to a greater, more fantastic kind of music, one in which all you need is an imagination, a little bit of patience, and a somewhat child-like view that world will spin on, even if not everything happens the way you planned.

Of Montreal fans will be delighted with this latest release...for anybody who hasn't heard them before I'll do my best to describe their sound...imagine using the Beatles "For The Benefit Of Mr Kite" as a starting point, throw in a little of Blurs "Interlude" & "The Debt Collector", Brian Wilson vocalising, every concievable instrument under the sun, shake vigorously and then take a walk through an acid drenched Munchkinland, a land where the Wicked Witch of the West is the very least of your troubles...do all that and you are somewhere close...not to everyones tastes I'm sure but definitely to mine

On its own merits, "Coquelicot" is an almost-clever, fancy little record which hearkens to the story-song records of an early-seventies childhood. Whimsy is the name of the game here--a distinctly over-the-top British, Edwardian-cum-Hippie whimsy, and what you think about this record depends on how you feel about that.

Frankly, this album takes the perjorative term "precious" to a new level I never thought possible. I would give this record zero stars just because I gradually became so irritated with each passing note I began wincing. It's so flighty and fruity and batty and barmy...argh, but what did I expect?

I have to give the group credit for the high-concept pop. A lot of creativity went into producing this. I have to recognize that there may be an audience for this. But the story is uninvolving, and musically, there is nothing too catchy here--the music is too mincing and the lyrics too idiotic to stick. The very last piece is exceptional, however: a piano composition which hints at ragtime, English Music Hall, maybe even a little Debussy? Too late, though! This is not the record with which to start your Of Montreal experience.

Of Montreal delivers another solid concept-album. This times, it's a story of some sort involving kidnapping, detectives... who knows what. The narrative is oblique, but the songs are generally tuneful, strange and well produced. There are experimental Olivia Tremor Control-style seques, little spoken word narrations, and other bits, but generally, it's pretty strong on a song-for-songs basis.

...And trying to understand this psychedelic quirk-pop concept album from Of Montreal (actually from Athens, Ga., US of A) would be an exercise in futility.

Most will find the Willy Wonka-esque world of "Coquelicot Asleep In The Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse" inaccessible, irritating or simply too goofy to warrant repeat listens. There is, however, something new to discover upon each spin, and it gets more easily digestible as you go. The overblown artistic machinations of "Coquelicot" include songs about pee-pee icicles, Turkish moths, wax museums, and an 18-minute piano solo titled "The Hopeless Opus or the Great Battle of the Unfriendly Ridiculous", a musical interpretation of the fold-out poster included with the album, or vice versa. All of this does not, however, make it a bad piece of music. The superb production and imaginative musicianship that went into this record is evident, ranging from zippy-trippy pop to charming slower numbers. A bad album? No. Genius? Hmmm. Perhaps more than anything, Of Montreal are just talented musicians with too much time, too many drugs and too many people telling them that they might be Sergeant Giants Lonely Hearts Club Beach Boy Band, giving them the notion that "Coquelicot" was a good idea. Or maybe the world just isn't ready for the hallucinogenic beauty of the group's aural circus.

The best metal record in a decade. This album makes me want to drink soy milk and get in shape like Rocky. Fans of dokken, dio, napam death,cradle of filth,Pantera,Monster Magnet,Sepultura, Judas Priest,Dream Theater, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Megadeth,Yngwie Malmsteen, Kyuss, and Carcass take note; you are no longer relevant.