Songfacts®:

• The song title references Les Chants de Maldoror (The Songs of Maldoror), a long surrealistic and macabre prose poem consisting of six cantos. It was written and published in the late 1860s by the Comte de Lautréamont, the pseudonym of the Uruguayan-born French writer Isidore-Lucien Ducasse (April 4, 1846 - November 24, 1870).
  
  The title character Maldoror is a figure of absolute evil who is opposed to God and humanity, and has shunned conventional morality.
  
  The work had a major influence on modern literature, particularly on the Surrealists and the Situationists.
• This was the most challenging track on Innocence Reaches to complete. Of Montreal frontman Kevin explained to Billboard magazine: "We recorded 'Le Chants de Maldoror ' a couple times to experiment with different tempos and styles. That one made me crazy.
  
  There are so many ways to approach a song. Then you think, 'Now it's time to record: should we add drum programming? Live drums? What kind of groove? What are the reference points? Reggae style? Let's try this fast. Let's make it a pop song. Let's play it like the Violent Femmes or the Stooges.' We tried all that, but ended up using a song by the band War as inspiration. It had an energy and vibe that worked.
  
  It's putting all the pieces together, in a collage, and pulling all these different reference points and styles together."