Bicycle Kick My Worries Away

Of Montreal is kind of what would happen if you took They Might Be Giants and replaced the educational records angle with lots and lots of acid. Their best album is probably The Gay Parade, and they tend to do story songs, songs with strong characters doing improbable and odd things. For a quick one video introduction, why don't you try Disconnect the Dots.

Bicycle Kick My Worries Away is a great blog name. This guy's posted demos for Of Montreal's awesome album Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse. The versions are quite close to the released album, and the audio quality's very good. This was one of the Elephant 6 records that I listened to endlessly in Baltimore, and it's a particular favorite. Yes, there's even a demo of Penelope in the bunch.

Once I took a road trip to Chicago with my brother's now wife then girlfriend, and we listened to all of her records on the way up. Before we left Chicago, I slipped into a record store to find something to play on the way back and picked up Of Montreal's Satanic Panic in the Attic. We got through the opening track (the aforementioned Disconnect the Dots) and into track two, Lysergic Bliss, when she cried out in her thick Arkansan accent, "This sounds like music to take drugs to!"

And I think that's fair.