It was a bit of a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo, but Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes briefly lived in southern Vermont. While he wasn’t there long enough to make a record as a Green Mountain resident, the indie-rock chameleon moved to the Marlboro area in 2024 with his then-fiancée, musician Christina Schneider, aka Locate S,1.
Barnes wasn’t about that Vermont life, though, judging by the songs on his latest LP, aethermead. He said adios to Vermont at the beginning of 2026, following his split with Schneider, and embarked on what the press release for the album, his 20th, calls his “Brooklyn era.”
“I tried to make it out there, but it’s difficult if you’re not made from the right stock,” Barnes wrote in the press release, describing his time in Vermont. “I couldn’t really function.”
He was less kind on the aethermead track “Dismissal Mosaics,” a forlorn breakup tune. “Surely, you knew me well enough to know / that I’d want to be a star in New York, not a hick in Vermont,” he sang.
When I listened to the track, I got flashbacks to the Vacant Lots’ 2011 interview in which the band said, “Fuck you, Burlington” before departing for New York, much like Barnes. Am I overreacting? Probably. Barnes was hardly here, and his album is a breakup record, so bitterness is sort of the default mood. But look, man, if you can’t find your artistic place in the super-vibrant Brattleboro music scene, you don’t really know how to look.
Local pride aside, aethermead is a decent breakup record. It just wasn’t meant to be between Vermont and Barnes. I guess us hicks will have to make do with our absolutely killer music scene. Speaking of which…
A slew of new singles from Vermont artists hit my inbox in recent weeks. First up is Burlington indie-rock outfit the Eyetraps. On October 13, the band released “Every Word,” a crunchy yet dreamy piece of power pop that falls somewhere between a rocker and a ballad, with shifting dynamics and jagged stabs of distorted guitars.
The song is an early look at the band’s debut full-length, due out later this year, and follows its excellent 2025 self-titled EP. Give it a listen at theeyetraps.bandcamp.com.
Singer-songwriter Sean Hood, aka Eastern Mountain Time, is back with a new single, “This Is It,” released on Sunday. The tune finds the Winooski troubadour in full ’70s AM Gold heartbreak mode, and I’m here for it.
“Nobody told me that a heart could break,” Hood sings. “On second thought, they did. / I’ve heard it told so many ways, / I’m certain this is it.”
It’s the first glimpse at the forthcoming Eastern Mountain Time record, produced by fellow singer-songwriter Eric George at the Underground in Randolph and mastered by Madaila’s Jer Coons at his studio in Jericho.
“This Is It” is streaming now at easternmountaintime.bandcamp.com.
This article appears in The Tech Issue • 2026.
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