Paralytic Stalks - of Montreal

"How can I bury this rebellion whilst proving that I'm still your rock'n'roll ally?"

Pitchfork favourites of Montreal have never been a band frightened to buck their own trend, and have spent the last fifteen years using their eleven album-strong back catalogue proving this, turning their collective back on the tried and tested from album to album and trying the patience of even the most hardcore hipster. Paralytic Stalks is their latest attempt, and, on first look, appears to be a hipster’s wet dream: bizzaro artwork, obscenely gratuitous vocabulary – Gelid Ascent, Malefic Dowery, Authentic Pyrrhic Remission, wowzers – and an outlook as existentially gloomy as you could possibly wish for.

Gelid Ascent sets the tone for the next 57 minutes with an almost ludicrous layering of sound drifting over Barnes’ vocals: “You are what parasites evolved from”, he spits. It’s confrontational, it’s direct, and it leads perfectly into Spiteful Intervention. Here, the lyrics take centre stage, and an intertwining of rapped expletives and sweetly-sung backing vocals conveys a confliction of emotion which is touched upon in the funk-driven Dour Intervention: “It’s just the way we combine”, Barnes reassures, before backtracking to “collide”. Delightfully cheery music is juxtaposed with ominous lyrics – “I don’t resent you / But I can’t settle the debt of our serrated history” – in that trademark of Montreal way, and We Will Commit Wolf Murder follows this pattern, with Barnes’ muttering of “I’m considered ugly from every angle / Yours is the only beauty I don’t want to strangle” soundtracked by angelic backing vocals and an entirely danceable beat.

Malefic Dowery signals the end of the light stuff – things are about to get heavy. The track ends with the Barnes proclaiming himself to “Still be your rock n roll ally,” clearly entirely aware that this record is only going to conscript scores of new oM fan, before slipping effortlessly into the weighty second half of the album and nine minute monster Ye, Renew the Plaintiff. The realisation of just how brilliantly Paralytic Stalks knits together is something which doesn’t dawn until the third or fourth listen – this is by no means a short record, yet it flows like one song: it feels operatic, and the realisation that you’ve listened to nine lengthy songs dawns at around the same time as you understand that you’re listening to something really quite special. Plaintiff itself appears to be a direct address to Barnes’ wife Nina, but serves only to expose his fluctuating emotions further - “What I feel is corrupted, broken, impotent, insane” is hardly a glowing testimony to a happy marriage. Such lyrical gloom makes the joyful music on the record feel like an even greater achievement: how such joy can be derived from what is conveyed as such a miserable muse is almost incomprehensible.

Wintered Debts starts out like an Elliott Smith tearjerker before slipping into the familiar bubble of warmth that layer upon layer of instrumentation has become up to this point. Transforming what should be a dense muddle of sound into a multi-layered musical tour de force is something we’ve come to associate with of Montreal throughout their history, and Paralytic Stalks is no exception. What should feel overly indulgent and disorientating feels light and captivating: even in the final four songs, which themselves span over 37 minutes, not a second of music feels superfluous to the record as a whole.

After the electronic mindfuck that is Exorcismic Breeding Knife comes epic closer Authentic Pyrrhic Remission. Almost eleven sweeping, soaring minutes pass before the album signs off with a piano ballad, Barnes serenading us with what could almost pass off as a happy ending: “Til this afternoon I was in exile / Now that word is obsolete”. It gives the album an almost therapeutic quality – layer upon layer of emotion has been expended through a deluge of sound and oft unpleasant imagery, and this is what we are left with: it is the simplistic beauty of the piano that prevails.

Paralytic Stalks is not the startling departure we’ve perhaps come to expect from of Montreal – it isn’t as revolutionary or as divisive as past records, but it has, perhaps for the first time, provided a truly unique sound, one which can be attributed solely to Barnes and co. It is a brilliant album with ideas both sonic and lyric that could, and probably will, be discussed ad infinitum. Your record collection will be left with a gaping hole without it.

9/10