As any of Montreal devotée knows, Kevin Barnes has long been known to make diaristic and compelling hay out of chronicling the unfiltered nuances of his personal life. As the long-running musical project enters its 30th year of existence, Barnes has remained true to form, continuing to evolve while navigating the murkiest waters life has to offer.
Emerging out of great personal upheaval in Barnes’s life, aethermead, of Montreal’s 20th album, recalls the beauty-in-the-breakdown immediacy of Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? mixed with the garage-y jangle of Lousy With Sylvanbriar and Cherry Peel’s homespun intimacy—but, remember, the last band that you’ll ever hear truly repeat themselves is of Montreal. “I don't need to reinvent the wheel every time, but I really don't want to repeat myself either—and aiming for that is always a little bit hard, but it’s fun too,” Barnes says about the new approaches and perspectives that color this latest irresistible batch of songs.
aethermead is something of a breakup record, but more importantly, it’s an account of personal rebirth. Following his move to Vermont with his then-fiancé two years ago, Barnes experienced a dual split with both his isolated surroundings and his significant other of the time. “I tried to make it out there, but it's difficult if you're not made from the right stock,” he reflects. “I couldn't really function.” After the relationship officially dissolved last year, Barnes relocated to Brooklyn, effectively falling in love with his new environment while rebuilding his mental state: “I've always had a romantic fascination with New York, but for forever I couldn't figure out how to make it work. The timing was perfect this time around.”
With the new setting came a burst of prolific creativity, which is saying something for an artist who’s already released four albums this decade, the latest being 2024’s eclectic Lady on the Cusp. Straying from the electronic leanings of more recent of Montreal records, Barnes hunkered down in Brooklyn recording studio the Honey Jar with engineer Drew Vandenberg and members of the live band – drummer Clayton Rychlik, keyboardist Jojo Glidwell, and bassist Ross Brand – to record the bones of the album in five days, before completing overdubs alone in his home studio. “It's a subterranean, windowless space,” Barnes says of the Honey Jar, “and you can hear the subway train going by. It's a really atmospheric, dreamy zone down there, and it was perfect for the state of mind that I was in. I was feeling dirty and dusty and needed to be buried for a while.”
To hear Barnes tell it, bringing in other people was crucial to navigating the pain and uncertainty that aethermead emerged from. “I was in a depressed and sad state of mind,” he recalls. “I’d just left this eight-year relationship with someone that I was planning on getting married to. It was difficult to come out of that and find my footing again as an individual outside of a partnership. The floor fell out from under me after my relationship dissolved, and connecting with these important people in my life was extremely beneficial and positive.”
Barnes refers to aethermead as personal and confessional “to an embarrassing degree” – a descriptor that says less about its contents than what it took to lay them bare. “It's a form of therapy, in a lot of ways, for me to work out my personal life through songs,” he explains. “You have these moments that aren’t yet fully realized that you're documenting – confusion, anger, frustration, bitterness, and resentment – and they get trapped in these songs so you can move past them.”
The word “aethermead” itself draws direct inspiration from the sources of healing that Barnes has since embraced in his Brooklyn era; the title was partially inspired by the Nethermead area within Prospect Park where he takes his dog for daily walks and has encountered new friends, while also referencing Barnes’s recent practice of meditating to guide him along new paths in this life. ”I sit by the window where the sun comes in, I take off my shirt, and I absorb the sunlight,” he says, describing his process. “It makes me feel grounded in my body, and if I have any internal conflict, it helps untangle and release that.” Basking in the warmth of his new surroundings, Barnes also has an added benefit of having family nearby, serving as a balm for this current phase in his life.
aethermead’s second single, “Already Dreaming,” was actually written before Barnes’ romantic split, but the impending fissure made its way into the song’s robust, dreamy jangle. “It has a clairvoyant quality to it that I didn't understand at the time,” he explains. “Part of me understood that the relationship was dissolving, and that part of me was lamenting the loss of this extremely important relationship and watching it dissolve into nothingness.”
Elsewhere on the album, “Take the Form” wrestles with personal wants and desires and how they run aground in a mismatched relationship amidst shreds of jagged guitar and a Velvets-recalling pulse; meanwhile, the speedy, almost punk-ish, “When” chronicles a relationship that took place shortly after Barnes arrived in NYC, as well as what he discovered about himself in the process. “It’s about a deep yearning for some sort of fulfillment that I’m not getting, as well as what function sex serves for an emotionally needy person,” he says while reflecting on the song’s lyrical expression. “It might sound sort of crass on the surface, but it's not really even about sex – it’s about the things I most want, like being valued.”
Such emotional nakedness has always been part and parcel when it comes to the of Montreal experience, and on aethermead Barnes is as fully immersed as ever when it comes to exposing his inner workings. “It's a tricky thing, sharing your personal life in your art,” he reflects. “I'm trying to get better at being more generous and less resentful. But I was in a really intense period when I wrote a lot of the songs, and they come from a place of pain.”
From that place, Barnes emerges with a record that feels singular and newly energized, cementing himself yet again as one of indie rock’s most daring risk-takers and persistent curator of arguably the genre’s most sprawling and fascinating catalog of music.
All songs written, produced and mixed by Kevin Barnes
Kevin Barnes - vocals, guitars, slide guitars, pianos, synths, percussion
Ross Brand - bass guitars, guitars
Clayton Rychlik - drums, vibraphone, synths, percussion
Jojo Glidewell - pianos, synths, keys
Engineered by Drew Vandenberg at Honey Jar studios in Brooklyn NY and by Kevin Barnes at Sunlandic Studios Brooklyn NY
Mastered by Mike Nolte
Artwork by David Barnes
Layout by Ryan Miller
