Reprinted from the Tuscon Citizen
Thursday, June 22, 2000
by Polly Higgins
Citizen Staff Writer

Straightforward, unabashed sweetness can be mixed bizness in pop music. But cavity-inducing Of Montreal dips each of its gooey tunes into a well-balanced mixture of playful psychedelia and childlike earnestness so that each goes down with smiley ease.

Of Montreal pours some sugar on Tuscon on June 26 at Solar Culture. Marshmallow Coast opens the show.

Jumping from a springboard created by several seminal bands of the '60s and '70s - especially the Kinks, the Beatles and the Beach Boys - and extended into the '80s by such bands as XTC's The Dukes of Stratosphear, Of Montreal dives into a pop-infused pool swimming with structured songwriting, hallucinatory impressions and innocent storytelling. The band's everything-but-the-toy-box parameters tell vibrantly colored tales of pudding-eating spiders, sugar-coated love and funeral fashion for the dead with both the usual instrumental suspects and an assortment of others, including penny whistles, gongs, toy pianos and kazoos.

"I guess the two biggest things that we're always doing, no matter what kind of style it is, (is) pop music and experimentation," drummer Jamey Huggins said from Athens, GA, this month. "If we make something that's really weird and dissonant, it will always end up in pop. (We) always just like pop music with intricate counter melodies and harmonies.

This musical approach is shared by a number of bands that have been grouped, along with Of Montreal, under the category of Elephant 6. Though its soon to be an actual record label, Huggins says, the E6 stamp has more to do with a communal approach to artistic creation found among a number of bands (Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, Apples in Stereo), many of which are based in Athens. The members of Of Montreal alone are involved in like-minded side projects - Huggins also plays with Great Lakes, guitarist Andy Gonzales with Marshmallow Coast, keyboardist Dottie Alexander with My First Keyboard, and bassist Derek Almstead with Summer Hymns.

Huggins seems a bit fatigued by the limitations of functioning under the E6 moniker ("Its such a boring thing") as he explains that while it initially helped a number of smaller bands by association with the more successful ones, it has also hurt because each group does have an individual sound.

"More than anything, its just friends. We all live in this little town in Georgia," Huggins says. "Everyone's still making great records, (so) nothing's changed for us. I think people just get carried away with that one idea . . . We're all just into creating these weird new sounds."

Of Montreal's sonic sojourns have been documented in four full-length CDs, including its latest, a 14-track compilation of released and unreleased tunes, Horse and Elephant Eatery (No Elephants Allowed) (2000, Bar/None). The prolific popsters are about one-third through a new album, Coquelicot, set for Christmas release.

Coquelicot, Huggins says was going to be a triple record until the band realized it would be too expensive. Which, of course, points to the economic restraints of being independent.

"It's frustrating. It's just the world isn't prepared to accept creativity in music," Huggins muses. As opposed to the new ideas put forth on grander scales by the band's forerunners, including band idol Ray Davies, "now, the biggest, most successful music is the least creative," he says, citing the major label-backed Britney Spears and "the boy groups."