of Montreal – White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood

Kevin Barnes – the utmost beta of all the beta males to emerge from the cliquey and incestuous Elephant 6 collective – has titled the latest of Montreal release White Is Relic/Irrealis Mood. Which means that after having already purged his toxic masculinity, Barnes is now ready to disembarrass himself of toxic whiteness, too.

Overall, this record has a faux-funky dance club feel, with the Prince 1999-era inspired drum samples of “If You Talk To Symbol/Hostility Voyeur,” for example. But I wonder: Who’s really moved to shake their ass to lyrics bemoaning the gentrification of Brooklyn (“Soft Music/Juno Portraits Of The Jovian Sky”)? The precious dear is positively triggered by “white flight in reverse”! In the promo video for “Paranoiac Intervals/Body Dysmorphia” (you just know the songs are ponderous when Barnes lacks the focus to settle on just one title) we’re treated to yet another drag-hag tottering around on heels. This sort of thing has been done to death at this point. Does he really think there is something alluring about the phony femme minstrel show on display here in the current year? The mood is bland and the music sounds like warmed-over Dandy Warhols from 15 years ago.

We have gotten to a point in society where it’s practically a hate crime to distribute flyers merely suggesting that “IT’S OKAY TO BE WHITE” on college campuses. So it’s no wonder dainty good-white Kevin Barnes would want to negate his racial identity in a pretentious bid “to save the world.” After all, failing to signal a point of view that isn’t expressly anti-white can be poison to a career in the entertainment industry. Or in academia in an era when teachers lose their jobs for expressing pro-white ideas, and the American media choose to ignore the unfolding genocide of the Boer in South Africa. And of course Barnes cites a typical litany of trendy Commie/Leftie pseudointellectuals (Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Ta-Nehisi Coates and James Baldwin) as influences on his ode to oikophobia.

As a bumptious bad-white, unashamed of my ancestors who fought for and built up this great nation, I take no issue whatsoever casting Barnes out of my racial tribe. Nor do I care if he craves authenticity. But personal experience has taught me that black folks don’t cotton to these kinds of desperate attempts by certain whites to pass the hot potato of racial guilt off on to other whites. They think it’s creepy. And shame in one’s identity is a universally unattractive trait no matter how high your wig or sparkly your eye shadow.

of Montreal
White is Relic/Irrealis Mood
[Polyvinyl]