Kevin Barnes - On Stage

On Stage

With of Montreal, Barnes has always tried to cross the bridge between his love of theater, comedy, and music, often resulting in interludes between songs - skits, slow-motion sword fights and surreal interaction between band members. However, since the release of Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, Barnes has been performing as his on-stage glam rock alter ego, Georgie Fruit, first mentioned in "Labyrinthian Pomp". The second half of the album comes after the twelve minute dark epic, "The Past Is a Grotesque Animal", a track which stands out in the album and the rest of the of Montreal repertoire because of how it succumbs to dark thoughts of suicide and chemical imbalance, themes hinted at more cheerily elsewhere on the album. Kevin has said that the album shows his transformation to Georgie Fruit, as is evident in the variation in musical style from in album leading up to "The Past Is a Grotesque Animal" and the two songs after. He has described Georgie Fruit as a black man in his forties who has undergone multiple sex changes. Georgie, Kevin told Pitchfork Media, was in a funk-rock band called Arousal back in the seventies.