of Montreal – “Bassem Sabry”

of Montreal - "Bassem Sabry"

of Montreal – “Bassem Sabry”

of Montreal - "Bassem Sabry"

Kevin Barnes has reinvented of Montreal’s sound many times over now, and for his next album, he’s channeled the “mid to late ’70s music scene in New York,” or so he told us in our interview with him from earlier this year. Aureate Gloom will be of Montreal’s thirteenth album, and it was written after Barnes and his wife separated last year. “I went off on some sort of journey, living a bit recklessly, a bit wildly, and just sort of reestablishing my sense of identity,” he told us. “Because, you know, when you are living with somebody and you’re a couple with somebody for as long as — we had been together for 11 years — so kind of reestablishing my identity outside of that coupledom.” The first song from the new album is “Bassem Sabry” — named after an Egyptian journalist who died earlier this year — and, in terms of where it slots in with the rest of the of Montreal discography, it falls between the funky swagger of False Priest and the pluckiness of his earlier work. Like Lousy With Sylvianbriar last year, it’s all over the map but still pretty wonderful. Listen below.

Tracklist:
01 “Bassem Sabry”
02 “Last Rites At The Jane Hotel”
03 “Empyrean Abbatoir”
04 “Aluminum Crown”
05 “Virgillian Lots”
06 “Monolithic Egress”
07 “Apollyon Of Blue Room”
08 “Estocadas”
09 “Chthonian Dirge For Uruk The Other”
10 “Like Ashoka’s Inferno of Memory”

Aureate Gloom is out 3/3 on Polyvinyl.

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