Of Montreal Convulses Their Way To Your Heart
Kevin Barnes and company accomplishes most organic effort yet.
Of Montreal
Skeletal Lamping
Released on Oct 21, 2008
Of Montreal is not one of my favorite bands. In fact, I really don’t like them. That being said, their ninth effort, Skeletal Lamping, is one of the most interesting and well-done albums I’ve heard this year.
Kevin Barnes has always been one of those characters that I can’t stand. His rainbow-painted brain has suffused out over eight previous albums in a way that sets me on a strange edge. His lyrics, his voice, his onstage presence, the sound of the band overall, have always reminded me of the sidewalk eccentric: that unwashed man with the mustache with cheese stuck in it on the corner outside the trendiest bar in town; the guy who does not ask for change, but turns up his boom box and flairs his shirtless body about in absolute acid-flashback glee along with anyone who comes near him despite the passersby shying away. You know this man because he is typical. Every town has one of them. It’s a calculated act that I can’t stand to fall for any more.
Luckily, Skeletal Lamping is the downfall of this act. These fifteen songs feel like hit that takes Barnes too far, every influence and idea he’s ever had spilling out over a vinyl canvas in a giant mess of paint where, because some of the ideas are oil-based and some water, they manage to separate enough to distinguish reds from blues from purples for just long enough to seem organic.
From the outset, Skeletal Lamping takes us on a journey through the unfiltered wants and fears of the sexually frustrated and completely dissonant mind of Barnes. It’s a spastic one with “Nonpareil of Favor” twinkling its way into your dancing shoes with a chorus of Barnes voices accenting every other line in a joyous thanks to a seemingly returned lover.
The subsequent tracks, despite maintaining an erratic bouncing between rhythms and structures within songs, feel just enough like traditional Of Montreal songs to not completely put off the older fans that are used to the power-pixie-pop of years past. “For Our Elegant Caste” and “St. Exquisite’s Confessions” will settle you into a dancey major-key mood that can keep the most self-important Prince fan satisfied… until you realize exactly what it is Barnes is talking about (swinging both ways and noting how much someone has in common with his “big cock”).
Yet the album moves through the disparate as well. At various points within songs the dark underbellies of the clouds that normally produce Of Montreal’s rainbows rear their ugly heads. “And I’ve Seen a Bloody Shadow” shows off the complete neurosis, moving Barnes from being scared of a digital monster all the way to worrying about his mind exploding because “they really poisoned [his] sexuality.”
Spastic, erratic, viscerally interesting, Skeletal Lamping hits on a living level. There’s a honesty behind the music (the addition of DJ is a brilliant one) that makes it relentless and powerful, a Nerf bat that a friend slaps you in the face with over and over. It’s fun, but at the same time, there’s something deep and disturbing about it. Swirling while cohesive, primal in instinct while implementing digital synths, this spilling of everything the band has and the brilliant production behind it all has me giving a band I’ve hated for eight albums a chance.
High Point
From its pounding intro to the Prince-like breakdown, back to the “I Am The Walrus”-esque last movement, Wicked Wisdom is one of the smartest of the naturally swooping gamut of sounds on the album.
Low Point
“Plastis Wafers” contains a self-referencing Sunlandic Twins line that is more unacceptable than Meat Loaf in a speedo.
Posted by Mark Steffen on Oct 20, 2008 @ 7:00 am
