of Montreal’s “Already Dreaming”: A Daughter-Directed Reverie from Kevin Barnes

Kevin Barnes opened a new chapter last month with the bruising, flirtatious single “When,” and then quietly flipped the script. “Already Dreaming,” the second preview of aethermead, feels like he rewound a film projector into the soft, blue-tinged fug of the 1960s and let a broken heart play out in slow motion.

The song itself is melancholic without being maudlin. It was written while Barnes was still in Vermont, and that geography matters: there is a hush to the verses, a sense of distance and unspooled time. Lyrically it reads like a last look, a summary of an eight-year relationship that has reached its conclusion but refuses to stop hoping. Musically, traces of classic pop — muted horns, a steady, brushed-snare pulse, and a chord progression that leans on melancholy — give it a timeless, slightly faded quality.

“I wrote this song while still living in Vermont,” Barnes says. “I can see now that it was a sad augury for the end of my 8 year relationship and the close of that important chapter of my life. As sad as the song is, it does point to new beginnings and the blind hopefulness inherent in ripping it up and starting again. Working with Beatrice on the music video was a dream. I loved watching her do her directorial thing. One of the main reasons I moved to NYC was to be closer to her and it felt really special to be able to collaborate on an art project together.”

The music video is directed by Barnes’ daughter, Beatrice, and you can feel the familial weight in the way she stages domestic scenes as tableaux. It opens on a dilapidated house: cracked plaster, faded floral wallpaper, light through blinds cutting the room into bars. There is a couple at the center, not lovers as much as two people orbiting each other, performing attention and rejection. Beatrice leans into surrealist moves without getting precious about them. A long, patient camera holds on small ritual gestures – a hand hesitating above a cup, a shoulder turned away, a mirror reflection that briefly lies – then punctuates with abrupt jumps in time, like someone waking inside a dream.

Beatrice offers the simplest explanation: “My vision for this music video was inspired by ’60s films and surrealist media. Listening to the song, I immediately saw a surrealist dream-like treatment centered around yearning and isolation in someone else’s presence. Stuck in a dilapidated house, an unhappy couple lives in conflict. One desperately fighting for the other’s attention while the other repels every effort.”

Her aesthetic choices matter. The color palette is sun-bleached pastels, not the glossy neon of Barnes’ earlier, more flamboyant phases. Cuts are deliberate; scenes hang long enough that the viewer starts to supply backstory. There are moments of quiet humor too, tiny absurd beats that stop the sadness from becoming syrupy: a record skipping, a plant wilting then recovering, a clock that keeps ticking even when time seems to stop. Watching it, you register both the specificity of a breakup and a more universal ache.

For fans who heard “When” and expected more swagger, this is a softer pivot. But it also deepens the narrative arc Barnes has been teasing for aethermead. The album, due out 6/5 via Polyvinyl, is shaping up to be a study in contrasts: bravado versus retreat, spectacle versus intimacy. In a live setting I imagine “Already Dreaming” settling like a hush over the room, phones lowering, people swaying close together, the band pulling down the volume and letting the melody do the work.

There is a small, resonant pleasure in watching father and daughter make something public together, too. You can see Barnes watching from the wings of the frame, giving over authorship to Beatrice’s eye. It feels less like handing over the reins and more like letting a new perspective steer the car for a while. The result is a video that mourns without melodrama and listens closely to the way memory warps the present.

aethermead is out 6/5 via Polyvinyl.