Fun Fun Fun Fest Preview

• Fun Fun Fun Fest Preview

  The blurbing of Fun Fun Fun Fest

• SATURDAY PREVIEW

• Okkervil River

  BY DOUG FREEMAN

• The New Pornographers

  BY DOUG FREEMAN

• Neurosis

  BY AUSTIN POWELL

• Emma Pollock

  BY DARCIE STEVENS

• Saviours

  BY AUSTIN POWELL

• Witchcraft

  BY AUDRA SCHROEDER

• Of Montreal

  BY DOUG FREEMAN

• Busdriver

  BY DARCIE STEVENS

• SUNDAY PREVIEW

• Ocote Soul Sounds

  BY THOMAS FAWCETT

• MC Chris

  BY MARC SAVLOV

• Against Me!

  BY AUSTIN POWELL

• Battles

  BY AUDRA SCHROEDER

• Murder City Devils

  BY DARCIE STEVENS

• The Cave Singers

  BY DOUG FREEMAN

• The Saints

  BY RAOUL HERNANDEZ

• Celebration

  BY AUDRA SCHROEDER

Of Montreal

With a catalog that brandishes every pop trick in the book, Kevin Barnes steers Athens, Ga.'s Of Montreal down brashly darker paths with Hissing Fauna. Spitting and abrasive, the album's unnervingly bitter as Barnes exorcises demons through contorted arrangements and synth beats jarringly manhandled. The group's nerdy, tongue-in-cheek lyrics still flow freely under the more sinister weight, lines like "Physics makes us all its bitches" ("Gronlandic Edit") almost parodying dance rock's hypersexualized aesthetic as Barnes wages battle between mind and body, especially in the manic-depressive chemical ode "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse." "Suffer for Fashion" offers an accessible entry to the disc, even spiked with a trembling glam falsetto that resurfaces throughout, but the nearly 12-minute centerpiece of "The Past Is a Grotesque Animal" dominates with a droning dance rhythm accompanying Barnes' uncomfortable confessional. "Let's tear this shit apart," he shouts, and shreds so thoroughly as to leave little in his rankling wake. (6:30pm, Stage 1)