Fugitive Air by ​of Montreal Lyrics

FAQ & Knowledge Song “Fugitive Air”

• ℚ. What have the artists said about the song?

  I think a lot of times when I’m putting a sequence together, I’m thinking of it as a live show, and I’ll put the more rocking, upbeat, poppy songs at the beginning. We went through a couple different sequences until we were happy with it, and it felt like it should kick off with something that’s kind of sexy and upbeat, because that’s, in a way, indicative of the spirit of the record. So I think, in that sense, I was thinking of Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed. Those are my two favorite Stones records, and Sticky Fingers, also. Those three start with a cool, slightly more uptempo song and then go off in totally different directions as the record goes on. So I thought it would be cool to start with something that could grab you right away and then you can veer off in whatever direction you want from there. It’s hard, because you realize people’s attention spans are short. There’s hundreds of records being released, so there’s a point to putting a standout track at the beginning to grab people.

  When I was in San Francisco making the demo, I had to go track down a slide, because I didn’t bring one. I had imagined in my head what it would sound like, so it was cool. Slide guitar is not easy to play, and as I was demoing it, I was like, “God! I suck at this!” But I could get close enough to give Bennett [Lewis] an idea of what I’d want him to play. Keith Richards is probably my favorite guitar player of all guitar players. He’s not really flashy. He doesn’t really solo, but if he does, it’s something interesting, like on “Sympathy for the Devil.” It’s not technically great, but it has a cool emotive quality to it. So I’ve always loved the way he plays guitar, and I always try to get that tone with my guitar. I don’t know if that has really ever come across in of Montreal shows or whatever, but in my head I’m always thinking that’s the best guitar sound. That’s what I want to get.

  And he’s a great rhythm player, just an incredible rhythm guitarist. Almost nobody wants to be a rhythm guitar player. Almost everyone wants to play leads and do flashy things. I’m really into dub and reggae music, too, and the guitar playing in that is so rhythmic and percussive, and it’s just a part of the organism, just a part of the rhythm section in this cool way. I think Keith is that sort of player, as well, just really connected to the drums and what Charlie [Watts] is playing. They’re just locked in.

  A lot of the lyrics on the record are very personal, but probably in a way that isn’t obvious, as far as like, “This is a song about heartbreak and blah, blah, blah.” But pretty much everything is connected to my personal life or just ideas and musings or whatever. The way I write, my mind is always so scattered, so one verse might be about one thing, and the next verse is total fantasy, and the next verse is a very personal statement, and the next verse is about a dream I had. It’s all very fluid. It’s rare that there’s a song that’s about one thing the whole way through. It does happen, but it’s not that easy for me, because I think that way my mind works is that it’s always bouncing all over the place. I don’t really worry about it. I don’t second-guess it that much. I just start writing and see where it goes, and if there’s something that annoys me, then I’ll change it. But, in general, I don’t really second-guess it that much. There are a lot of lines that I have where my brother will be like, “God, I can’t imagine why you’d write that or what you were thinking.” [Laughs] And I can’t really say, either. There are a lot of songs that I’ve written that I’m like, “It’s so weird that I wrote that song! I can’t imagine what the state of mind I was in when I wrote it.” But I don’t worry about it. It’s always hard for me to explain or define things, because it’s not something that I understand, myself.

  –Kevin Barnes, Under the Radar