Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
*drool*, October 6, 2002
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.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
and so, post music is born, May 27, 2001
By A Customer
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.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Of roses and peppermint eels and jello in the fingerprints, November 17, 2004
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.
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