Paralytic Stalks

of Montreal | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 7, 2012)
• Original Release Date: 2012
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Polyvinyl Records
• ASIN: B006HH614O
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Music
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #84,347 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

The 2012 full-length from of Montreal, Paralytic Stalks sees Kevin Barnes writing with a lyrical and musical direction that is infinitely more personal than anything he has written since 2007's Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? Each track feeds off the last in what seems a singular album-long movement that never allows you to rip your ears away. Paralytic Stalks at times resembles modern classical with its intricate compositions, while at others echoes of neo-prog, pseudo-country, and 60s pop. Available on 180-gram vinyl, CD and digital.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I don't know what everyone is talking about. I have no words to describe this album!! March 23, 2012

By LonghornLady

Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase

MY GOD!!! This album is just SOOO real. Too real for some of you apparently. Like someone else previously said, Georgie Fruit has left the stage. I feel like the emotionality/angst that Kevin projected into that character have been brought back to their rightful home: his own head, body, and experience. I love every song on this album. For me personally, it's like a reflection of my life, and dare I go so far as to say, our generation as a whole. He just captures it. He gets it. It's like Skeletal Lamping has grown. Not grown up, but grown. I could go on and on, but the fact is this is the best album of 2012 so far. Other than skeletal Lamping, it's one of my most favorite of Montreal albums. I like the psychedelic spree stuff too, don't get me wrong, but this is just such a well executed, artistic expression of what our generation is going through and what we've came from I don't know how you cannot like it unless you're just not in touch (or comfortable) with yourself. I love that he had the gaul to make this. I've been waiting on something just like this, and didn't even know it. It' fun, it's beautiful, it's angry,it's poppy, it's jazzy, and i love it! Get it! Listen to it, and try to understand what he was attempting to convey. Don't put your expectations before the simple act of just listening to receive what he's trying to give you. Do it! Damn, album just ended and yes, I got a little sad about it.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Just buy it. Seriously, who are you kidding? I bet you just purchased Nicki Minaj or something, you jerk. Way to go. February 13, 2012

By icicle

Format:Audio CD

This is has got to be the best album to come out of 2012 so far, and, in my not-so-humble opinion, pretty much overshadows almost every other pop album released over the last entire year (although the term 'pop album' is barely justifiable). Do yourself a favor: buy it. Listen to it over and over again until Kevin Barnes' voice drives your emotions over a cliff and into the haunting abyss that is his mind. Paralytic Stalks offers an even darker glimpse into Barnes' psyche, seeming to reach even farther into the depths than on False Priest or Skeletal Lamping. It holds true to their seductive sweetness, while drenching us in an electronic hell of sonic existential horror that is unparalleled in its sheer musical and emotional depth by what other pop artists of our time are passing off as entertainment. Settling for anything less than the quality of this work is to be both held prisoner by your own complacency and to be deprived of something truly beautiful.

"Dour Percentage" is an immediate hit for those expecting a progression of sorts from False Priest's sound, although the whole album has a more organic feel, with its flute and sax arrangements. As always, there are hooks everywhere, but they feel increasingly often as if they're being pulled like teeth right out of my skull. "Wintered Debts" is one of the catchiest damn lyrical see-saws my brain has ever had the pleasure of being hijacked on, but it takes some serious work to wrap your mind around before the addiction sets in. "We Will Commit Wolf Murder", immersing our ears in another one of Barnes' brilliant vocal layering exercises, is yet another treasure, which didn't occur to me to begin with; these songs always take me a good five or six listens to even begin to appreciate. Don't give up on them; some are an acquired taste.

While the break in the middle of the thirteen-minute-long "Authentic Pyrric Remission" can't hold everyone's attention, the first movement alone is enough to keep me interested, and the ballad at the end of the album is well worth the wait. Maybe I just have too much free time, but the calamitous soundscapes produced in "Exorsismic Breeding Knife" feel kind of perfectly hung in between "Wintered Debts" and "Authentic..." like some sort of willful transgression from consistency. The anticipation is half of the fun, and the spontaneity of Paralytic Stalks is certainly refreshing to me; as with basically every Of Montreal album of late, it is a nigh unpalatable journey tinged with a bit of hyper-aware sadism on the part of both the writer and the listener.

If you are new to Of Montreal, (first of all...WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?) this album certainly has the potential to turn you away. In no way is it as accessible as Sunlandic Twins, but if that is the band you want to hear, stick to the singles if you must (just know that I will anonymously hate you for it). It shares more similarities with Skeletal Lamping, with its rapid juxtapositions, though its musical ideas feel more thoroughly explored. Paralytic Stalks is intense, complex, and has a little something special for every Of Montreal fan. Almost every song feels like it could be a cue taken straight off a previous album; however this is not to say we are being led in circles. On the contrary, these songs are fresh, exciting examples of how incredibly technically proficient Barnes has become as a recording artist.

My advice: see them live. You will not be disappointed. One of the best things about this band is their live show. Paralytic Stalks tour begins 2/17.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars of Montreal - Paralytic Stalks February 7, 2012

By Rudolph Klapper VINE™ VOICE

Format:Audio CD

It was sometime around the third or fourth extended coda, amidst buzzsaw guitar riffs, cheesy sci-fi space effects, the jarring tonal shifts and the occasional burst of fire alarm noise, that I resigned myself to a particular fact: Kevin Barnes is never going to change. Or, to put it another way - he's always going to change, usually with a middle finger aimed in the general direction of his last record. And really, there's no incentive for him to rein himself in: ever since The Sunlandic Twins of Montreal has become a one-man show, and certainly no one is holding their breath waiting for Polyvinyl to edit their biggest draw. So it is that we get an album like Paralytic Stalks, one that is as sprawling, egomaniacal and bat**** insane as any Barnes has put down. This lack of an editor is what leads to a song like the divisive "Exorcismic Breeding Knife," a song so obviously anti-commercial and contrary to what of Montreal have built their sound on that it's less an actual song and more a referendum on just how far Barnes can go nowadays before people bat an eye. Chances are this one won't be on an Outback commercial anytime soon.

Make no mistake - this is nothing new for Barnes. Sure, he has been talking up 20th century minimalism in interviews - Penderecki, Ives, Schoenberg - but those are just convenient touchstones for an increasingly out-there experimentalism that has been a recurring theme in late-period of Montreal: Hissing Fauna's "The Past is a Grotesque Animal;" "You Do Mutilate" off of 2010's False Priest; the scattershot framework of Skeletal Lamping. The difference between those songs and "Exorcismic Breeding Knife," though, is the latter's utter lack of purpose. It's simply there, a seven-and-a-half minute-long burst of atonality and spoken word nightmares, which creates quite the atmosphere but begs the question: why? It's cold and it's clinical, all feelings Barnes was probably going for, but in the context of Paralytic Stalks, an album predicated on Barnes being more heart-on-his-sleeve than he's ever been before, it's worse than pointless.

It's a shame, because, for much of Paralytic Stalk's first half and even for most of the more unhinged second act, Kevin Barnes strikes a near-perfect balance between pop mastery and a delightful sort of weird. This, of course, has a lot to do with Barnes' famously acerbic lyrics, which take a turn for the better here despite his propensity for using language only an English professor could love. He hasn't sounded this engaged since Hissing Fauna, nor have his vocals ever sounded quite so strained. That's the good thing about Paralytic Stalks - even when you can't really understand what Barnes is saying, between the deranged yelps and those easily understood tidbits ("It's ******* sad / that we need a tragedy / to gain a fresh perspective in our lives" goes one stomach-punch of an opening), you can generally get the feeling that this is coming from a dark and deeply personal place. Nothing is ever going to stop Barnes from naming a song "Malefic Dowery" or writing lyrics like "naturally I want to help you invoke the architect of salutary memes / our heads are pregnant with divine mechanics but, oh, how we're tyrannized / by tentacles of their ferine stupidity." But occasionally a gem will pop up like "once more I turn to my crotch for counsel," or Barnes will descend back down to the tongue of humans for a moment and speak with touching frankness ("I spend my waking hours haunting my life / I made the one I love start crying tonight" goes the weeping refrain from "Spiteful Intervention"). It's a reminder that of Montreal is, first and foremost, a vehicle for Barnes to express his innermost grievances and joys, and given the embarrassingly bare-bones style and narcissist bent, you have to admire just how plainly he lays all his cards out on the table.

Where Paralytic Stalks really shines, however, is through its hooks. The sequence from "Spiteful Intervention" through "Ye, Renew the Plaintiff" is Barnes' strongest since Hissing Fauna, and it's blissfully unaware of the existential baggage it has to carry. "We Will Commit Wolf Murder" and "Malefic Dowery" are probably two of the most "traditional" of Montreal songs here; the former a catchy pop-rock number with a muscular bass line and an out-of-left-field vamp in the outro, while the latter calls to mind the sweeter melodies of the Elephant 6 days and one of the more pleasantly lush productions on the record. "Ye, Renew the Plaintiff," meanwhile, might be the best track here, not only for its surprisingly jagged guitar solo and propulsive chorus but also for the way it perfectly bridges Paralytic Stalk's quite disparate halves. "I can think of nothing but getting my revenge / make those ******* pay," Barnes screams, and that's where the guitar really goes off, spiraling up into a glorious distortion before abruptly tailing off into the song's second half, where things rapidly go from angry to weird. Here, though, it's all according to plan: the way the song builds itself back up and around a driving piano beat and discordant saxophone; increasingly random bits of noise splicing in here and there, but eventually coming to rest right where they should; a major-key payoff musically and emotionally.

Things get less and less coherent as Barnes builds on this deconstruction of a pop song through "Wintered Debts" and the aforementioned "Exorcismic Breeding Knife," to the point where Barnes has squandered any goodwill and murdered the record's momentum by the time "Authentic Pyrrhic Remission" rolls around. It's a shame, because if any song could point to what Barnes can accomplish as an avant-garde musician, it's this one. The first half of the song is an old-school of Montreal classic in its own right, all sticky-sweet melodies and swinging hooks, yet when the expected shift comes to a blistering array of electronics and a downtempo move to horror-film strings, it flows logically rather than bashing the listener over the head with dissonance. The way Barnes slowly tones down the fuzz, segueing into the lovely wisp of a piano ballad that closes out the last two minutes, is a striking example of restraint from a man not usually blessed with that particular faculty. This is minimalism with a purpose, one that enhances the song and, with its gradual descent, provides a sort of comedown from the rest of the album as well. "Our illumination is complete," Barnes sings at the close, and it's an overdramatic statement for a typically overdramatic guy, but it's also one with a bit of hope for the future. Paralytic Stalks is most assuredly not the type of record that is going to get of Montreal a mainstream breakthrough a la The Sunlandic Twins, but for those of us who have been frustrated with his inconsistency and general unwillingness to stay in any one place, it just might be the twinkling of a light at the end of the tunnel.