Band Review: Cheer up your breakup with “Bedside Drama”
Band: Of MontrealAlbum: “Bedside Drama: A Petite Tragedy”
Stick the Beach Boys and the entire cast of Sesame Street in a blender and you’ll come up with something that sounds a lot like Of Montreal.
Hailing from Athens, Georgia, Of Montreal creates sunny, unabashed pop that chronicles that crossroads of life where you traded Strawberry Shortcake for the evening news. Their second album, 1998’s “The Bedside Drama: A Petite Tragedy,” is a case in point.
The album is conceptually based on the boy meets girl just in time for it all to go sour story, but the joy of the thing lies in the telling. The kazoo orchestra on the opener “One of a Very Few of a Kind” is typical of the bubblegum arrangements that fill the rest of the album and showcase the childlike metaphors that double as very real adult situations.
“The Bedside Drama” captures the twists and turns of the relationship arc, with the narrator beginning as a “Happy Yellow Bumblebee” and ending with the realization that “It’s Easy to Sleep When You’re Dead.” The bouncy melodies and jazz-inflected chord changes are enough to inspire a thousand bedroom ballerinas and with a soundtrack this catchy you’ll find yourself wishing for a breakup of your own.
Front man Kevin Barnes writes lyrics that are every bit as much Freudian windows into your repressed childhood as they are pop songs. Witty and honest refrains like “I doubt that you’re the only one like you that I’ll find, but for sure you’re one of a very few of a kind” paint the kind of doomed relationship that we’ve all experienced. Of course the heartbreak, pain, and frustration were never this much fun before.
Over a career of nine albums, Of Montreal has covered a lot of ground, (all of which can be sampled at www.ofmontreal.net) but none of it is more endearing or more accessible than “The Bedside Drama.”
Zach Pendleton is a junior majoring in English and reviews CDs for the Utah Statesman. Comments may be sent to zpendleton@cc.usu.edu