Kevin Barnes airs new of Montreal material at London's Electrowerkz

Even by of Montreal’s ever-morphing standards, the material which makes up Lousy With Sylivanbriar marks one of their biggest departures from recent form yet. An album consisting of guitar/drum arrangements and alt-country licks was always going to force Kevin Barnes to radically reconfigure his live approach, but if tonight’s acoustic performance was a water-testing ‘soft launch’ for the new material, it was a startlingly well-formed one.

Splitting the set between brand new songs and Hissing Fauna material, one of the most striking things about tonight’s performance is how accomplished Barnes is as a straight up singer-songwriter. Barnes’ recording techniques have often masked the strength of the songwriting at the core of his music, but with just vocals and guitar, we’re reminded how powerful his unaltered voice has the capacity to be.

Performing the material with excellent vocal foil Rebecca Cash, Barnes’ new material glows with surprisingly ornate harmony, while retaining all the eccentric, darkly humorous lyricism with which he’s associated. With Lousy With Sylvanbriar, Barnes has constructed some of his more assured melodies for some time, and with tonight’s pared back performance, he has the wisdom to let their natural strengths come to the fore.

Setlist
Fugitive Air
She Ain’t Speakin’ Now
She’s A Rejecter
Rain Drop In My Skull
Amphibian Days
Suffer For Fashion
New Song
All My Sorrows (The Chordettes cover)
Collosus
Obsidian Currents
Gronlandic Edit
Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse

Words by Russell Warfield. Photograph by Nina Barnes.