With Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, Kevin Barnes strides glowingly and gallantly into the annals of indie rock's elite—a broken-hearted harlequin pandering to the dance-crazed masses as well as the bookish, dictionary-toting geeks, all while establishing himself as one of the most musically progressive and inventive songwriters of our era.  Full text...

The emotional accuracy of the record lies in Of Montreal's unwillingness, or perhaps inability, to settle for "woe is me" moping. Barnes resists the urge to cry into an acoustic guitar, instead portraying the full-spectrum manic mood-swings of the brokenhearted: desperately seeking distraction in drugs or religion, imagining himself as a cynical-minded lothario, and even considering violence.  Full text...

Of Montreal's Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, in addition to being flat-out great, is probably, and unintentionally, the first album to address the concerns of a post-blogosphere pop landscape.  Full text...

The garishly-titled Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? (an appellation which isn’t so much awful as it is hilarious) continues this collision of verbal obstinance and pure pop pleasure.  Full text...

You could easily spend the rest of the winter listening to it. And most of the spring and summer too.  Full text...

Hissing Fauna is an excellent achievement diminished only by following a masterpiece.  Full text...

It’s funky, occasionally sexy and often brilliant.  Full text...

Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?'s solid enough to get nearly any fan of pop dancing and singing along, but Barnes delivers career-best lyrics for anyone who wants to follow along.  Full text...

It's all darkly beautiful, because Barnes continues to emote more through the music than through his words; "Cato" follows that stark message with close to 60 seconds of icy keyboards, as if to ease people into accepting that they're getting a newly unadulterated, prolonged taste of his personal life.  Full text...

Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? is a fascinating study in contradictions, an album of relatively accessible pop music that pulses with the pain of a life in pieces. Seething like a fresh scrape but pushing the boundaries of his art, Barnes spills his guts and creates one of 2007's most compelling records.   Full text...

An intermittently pleasurable record from a talented songwriter with an overstuffed brain.  Full text...