ALBUMS OF THE DECADE: HISSING FAUNA, ARE YOU THE DESTROYER? (2007)

2007 saw the release of Bloc Party’s ambitous quasi-concept album A Weekend In The City, the Arctic Monkeys’ excellent sophomore effort Favourite Worst Nightmare and the Cribs’ breakthrough record Men’s Needs, Women’s Needs, Whatever. It also saw the release of Radiohead’s innovative In Rainbows, which had the tunes to match the hype. Overall, though, if 2006 will be remembered for British releases then 2007 saw G.B. get served by the U.S. of A. There were excellent dance-punk albums from !!! and LCD Soundsystem, while Arcade Fire went epic on Neon Bible and Les Savy Fav released the brilliant Let’s Stay Friends. Kings of Leon went for the mainstream on Because of the Times whilst Jeffrey Lewis released an excellent album of lo-fi Crass covers.

The best album of 2007, however, was truly unique, seeing Kevin Barnes tackling depression and heartbreak in the best way he knew how; by detailing his transformation into transsexual alter-ego Georgie Fruit.

Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? marked the moment when of Montreal fully realised their potential and, over a decade into their career, released their masterpiece.

Written entirely by frontman Kevin Barnes, the album was one man’s desperate attempt to deal with separation from his wife, while dosed up on anti-depressants. What follows in not your usual weepy acoustic bullshit (I’m looking at you Sea Change), as evidenced in the frankly insane first single “Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse”, in which Barnes pleads “C’mon mood shift, shift back to good again” over a Nintendo synth line and screams of “C’mon chemicals”.

It’s catchy as fuck, and album opener “Suffer For Fashion”, with the memorable refrain “we’ve got to keep our little clique clicking at 130 bpm” is similarly infectious. “A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger”, meanwhile, would have been a sure-fire hit if it didn’t open with the line “I spent the winter on the verge of a total breakdown”.

Album centrepiece “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal” acts as a twelve minute long emotional breakdown, and put simply it’s mind-numbingly awesome. It also acts as the transitional piece in which Kevin Barnes becomes Georgie Fruit, the aforementioned transsexual alter-ego, and introduces the complete mind-fuck of the album’s second half.

“Labyrinthian Pomp” sees Barnes take his falsetto to ridiculous new heights, while the riff-tastic “She’s a Rejector”, with it’s awesome chorus of “there’s the girl that left me bitter / want to pay some other girl to just walk up to her and hit her”, sounds like 4 or 5 unrelated song parts have been stapled together. But my personal favourite track is album closer “We Were Born The Mutants Again With Leafling”, which details Barnes’ eventual reconciliation with his wife Nina Twin. It’s a suitably cathartic end to the album, one which of Montreal are going to have a hart time beating.

Jed. x