#365songs (88 / 365)

I had to follow up Queen's goofy-ass song with this also intermittently goofy-ass band, though this is not one of their goofy songs.

Quite the contrary: "Paranoiac Intervals" is a deeply, troublingly possessive song, but it's also a straight banger. The melodies are ridiculously simple but Kevin Barnes delivers them in a compellingly petulant (and, I dare to hope, self-aware) way — especially the crux of the possessiveness, and the chorus, and the song as a whole: "You should be fucking with no one else!!" The bones of the song are very standard, but the weird synth sounds hung off those bones make it distinctive, and the lyrics are the kind of thing that no one but Kevin Barnes could write (but Barnes could write them in their sleep). And to be honest I think there's a little bit of "Seaside Rendezvous" in the plinky piano melody in the instrumental break between the verses.

This album has some kind of weird the-world-is-actually-a-simulation conceit that apparently inspired the two-part structure of every song on it: it's only six tracks, but each track is really two songs that bleed into each other in the way "Paranoiac Intervals" bleeds into "Body Dysmorphia" here. I'm not as into "Body Dysmorphia" as I am "Intervals," but I don't dislike it, and this kind of high-concept formal shit wins me over very easily. And the transition between the two songs is really well-executed.

The first of Montreal album I got really into was the also excellent Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? but for the last few years I've found myself listening to this album, White is Relic / Irrealis Mood, more often. It's kind of interesting to me when the canon favorite doesn't end up being the one with staying power. Or, possibly, Hissing Fauna just had a head start on me wearing it out.