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Review
One could accuse of Montreal of being many things - baffling, pretentious, frustrating - but predictable they ain't. While their early oeuvre displayed a knack for psychedelic whimsy, they have latterly embraced abyssal rumination - and this, their ninth album, consolidates that shift into darker territory. In of Montreal's surrealist world, however, desolation is soundtracked by screwball disco-funk. The effect is profoundly disorientating, like being trapped in a Salvador Dali painting with the Mad March Hare as tour guide.
Last year's harrowing, flamboyant opus Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? probed the troubled psyche of Kevin Barnes, and the frontman's existential battlefield remains our backdrop here. Skeletal Lamping recounts the odyssey of sexual experimentation that accompanied Barnes' separation from his wife and child. To freely tell these tales of misadventure he sings as Georgie Fruit, his inner black she-male, and this quirky device ensures the album's sense of fun. After all, when your songs feature such dubious tributes to conquests as "you are the only one with whom I would role play Oedipus Rex" it's important to retain a bit of humour.
The tragi-comic pendulum swings throughout Skeletal Lamping, causing fragments of words and music to clash violently - often within the same song. Nonpareil of Favour, for example, opens with an ecstatic declaration of love before plummeting into grungy despair. Such persistent shape-shifting of pace and sentiment renders it impossible to distinguish between joy and misery. Touched Something's Hollow is no sooner wallowing in its refrain of 'why am I so damaged?' than it is shattered by the trumpet fanfare of An Eluardian INstance. However, this uplifting account of how Barnes met his wife is in turn swiftly undermined by Gallery Piece. Told through conflicting emotions like 'I wanna scratch your cheeks... I wanna dry your tears' it announces the dark reality of lust for all to see.
Skeletal Lamping celebrates the unsettling revelation that pleasure runs amock through the long days and nights of the soul. And, as Id Engager closes the album in technicolour catharsis, you're left reeling at how exhilarating someone else's therapy can be. --Elvissia Williams
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CD Description
Of montreal's critical breakthrough, 'Hissing Fauna, are you the destroyer?', catapulted the band to the upper echelon of indie stardom. The album landed on over 30 major year-end lists including paste, pitchfork, rolling stone and associated press, and sold over 100,000 copies worldwide. A year and a half later, Of Montreal are back with skeletal Lamping, one of the most eagerly anticipated albums of 2008. Skeletal Lamping absolutely delivers. It's a complicated and dense thrill ride packed with slinky grooves that demand a physical response. Its unpredictable, completely unique, and epic. And while Of Motreal's albums have always been epic, Skeletal Lamping is an unprecedented achievement that will be talked about for years.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
It was pretty obvious from the start that "Skeletal Lamping" was not going to be an ordinary album -- or even an ordinary Of Montreal album, if there is such a thing. Reason: Kevin Barnes said in advance that the normal tracklisting with contain many, many more tiny songs, and would show his transformation into his alter ego -- Georgie Fruit, a fortysomething black multi-transgendered ex-convict funk musician.
So unsurprisingly, it's a pretty schizophrenic little album, to the point where it feels like someone is carefully spreading your brain over a piece of toast. Sometimes this is a good thing.... and sometimes not.
"My lover, I've been donating/Time to review/All the misinterpretations/That define me and you," Barnes sings yelpily, over a dancing piano-psychpop melody.... only to mutate into a thumping clashing rock'n'roll number halfway through, and then again into a twinkly experimental song before it ends. "Wicked Wisdom" is a similar experience -- sparkly and schizophrenically laid out, especially since it leads into...
... "For Our Elegant Caste," a catchy and unhinged pop song that completely takes us into the world of Georgie Fruit and the equally oddly-named "Chrissie List." Barnes doesn't even sound like himself here -- he sings in falsetto, and constantly repeats that "We can do it softcore if you want/But you should know I take it both ways." Huh?
And most of the songs that follow are equally hard to put your finger on -- each one seems to be a string of smaller songs that rarely have anything in common. Stately pianopop, joyous orchestral funk, blippy electropop, seductively weird rock'n'roll, stoned-sounding recitations, mellow jazzy tunes, delicate expanses of synth, sexually-charged string-laden pop, and a thousand combinations of the above are all squashed together like pages of a megacompressed book.
"Skeletal Lamping" is one of those albums where you're not sure if you should love it for its ingenious twisting of musical norms, or hate it because it's so hard and confusing to listen to. Honestly speaking, I had moments of both emotions -- on one hand, Of Montreal's latest is even madder and more bizarre than anything they've ever made before, and more bravely experimental than most bands will get even on heavy-duty drugs. And the Georgie Fruit persona allows Kevin Barnes to completely break free of any musical boundaries.
On the other hand, the ceaseless abrupt transitions in mid-song -- up to five times a song -- are enough to jolt your eyeballs from their sockets, because there's no flow and no warning. Boom, the song has just switched over in the middle. That, and many Georgie Fruit lines like "Lover face, how your *ss is pumping" are too blatant for Barnes' surreal writing talents.
That said, the insane tangle of "Skeletal Lamping's" instrumentation just drips with enthusiasm -- it sounds like Barnes and Co. have found a new wellspring of inspiration, and they're draining it for all they're worth. Funky guitars, brassy horns, subtle piano, heavy swips of synth and a lot of snapped fingers, clapping hands and wild beats all get smushed together with whirling whirring bass and a blob of solemn organ. It can make you want to dance, sink you into an echoing cavern, and drive you through sordid alleyways in a gloriously depraved nightlife.
Barnes seems to switch randomly between himself and Georgie Fruit in this album, and his vocals recklessly run between falsetto croons to a more "normal" pop voice. As for the lyrics, they are full of references to Orpheus, Oedipus Rex, "Valerie's Week of Wonders" and Germaine Greer. In short, they're as schizophrenic as the music -- we get the forthright sexual references interspersed with more oblique, eccentric lines like "I feel so abused by the sky karma icy canova I got from" and "The great cuirass of my skull is choking on their dull symptoms."
"Skeletal Lamping" is an album that prompts much headscratching, with its rabid case of multiple-personality disorder and wildly varying lyrics. It's far from perfect, but it grows on you -- if you don't mind songs that won't commit to a single style.
So unsurprisingly, it's a pretty schizophrenic little album, to the point where it feels like someone is carefully spreading your brain over a piece of toast. Sometimes this is a good thing.... and sometimes not.
"My lover, I've been donating/Time to review/All the misinterpretations/That define me and you," Barnes sings yelpily, over a dancing piano-psychpop melody.... only to mutate into a thumping clashing rock'n'roll number halfway through, and then again into a twinkly experimental song before it ends. "Wicked Wisdom" is a similar experience -- sparkly and schizophrenically laid out, especially since it leads into...
... "For Our Elegant Caste," a catchy and unhinged pop song that completely takes us into the world of Georgie Fruit and the equally oddly-named "Chrissie List." Barnes doesn't even sound like himself here -- he sings in falsetto, and constantly repeats that "We can do it softcore if you want/But you should know I take it both ways." Huh?
And most of the songs that follow are equally hard to put your finger on -- each one seems to be a string of smaller songs that rarely have anything in common. Stately pianopop, joyous orchestral funk, blippy electropop, seductively weird rock'n'roll, stoned-sounding recitations, mellow jazzy tunes, delicate expanses of synth, sexually-charged string-laden pop, and a thousand combinations of the above are all squashed together like pages of a megacompressed book.
"Skeletal Lamping" is one of those albums where you're not sure if you should love it for its ingenious twisting of musical norms, or hate it because it's so hard and confusing to listen to. Honestly speaking, I had moments of both emotions -- on one hand, Of Montreal's latest is even madder and more bizarre than anything they've ever made before, and more bravely experimental than most bands will get even on heavy-duty drugs. And the Georgie Fruit persona allows Kevin Barnes to completely break free of any musical boundaries.
On the other hand, the ceaseless abrupt transitions in mid-song -- up to five times a song -- are enough to jolt your eyeballs from their sockets, because there's no flow and no warning. Boom, the song has just switched over in the middle. That, and many Georgie Fruit lines like "Lover face, how your *ss is pumping" are too blatant for Barnes' surreal writing talents.
That said, the insane tangle of "Skeletal Lamping's" instrumentation just drips with enthusiasm -- it sounds like Barnes and Co. have found a new wellspring of inspiration, and they're draining it for all they're worth. Funky guitars, brassy horns, subtle piano, heavy swips of synth and a lot of snapped fingers, clapping hands and wild beats all get smushed together with whirling whirring bass and a blob of solemn organ. It can make you want to dance, sink you into an echoing cavern, and drive you through sordid alleyways in a gloriously depraved nightlife.
Barnes seems to switch randomly between himself and Georgie Fruit in this album, and his vocals recklessly run between falsetto croons to a more "normal" pop voice. As for the lyrics, they are full of references to Orpheus, Oedipus Rex, "Valerie's Week of Wonders" and Germaine Greer. In short, they're as schizophrenic as the music -- we get the forthright sexual references interspersed with more oblique, eccentric lines like "I feel so abused by the sky karma icy canova I got from" and "The great cuirass of my skull is choking on their dull symptoms."
"Skeletal Lamping" is an album that prompts much headscratching, with its rabid case of multiple-personality disorder and wildly varying lyrics. It's far from perfect, but it grows on you -- if you don't mind songs that won't commit to a single style.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
33 reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
White Album for the New Millenium
27 Jan 2009
Format:Audio CD
This is an amazing album, but a challenging one. The end of the very first track, "Nonpareil Of Favor," is three minutes of painful, cacophonous, mess, meant to represent Kevin Barnes's transition into alter ego "Georgie Fruit." Despite any possible artistic merit, it is so annoying that I actually edited the track end-time in iTunes.
Fortunately, things pick up after the end of the first track. "Lamping," what people call "spotlighting" in my neck of the woods, involves using a spotlight to stun and hunt nocturnal woodland critters; in "Skeletal Lamping" Barnes bravely airs his dirty laundry, spotlighting his innermost thoughts in a pornographic, yet poignant, musical collage. You may find yourself with a verse stuck in your head that is too dirty to sing in public. I catch more of the dense, literary lyrics on each listen. Eventually I revisited of Montreal's previous album, "Hissing Fauna" (which I had previously found underwhelming), to understand more of Kevin Barnes's lyrical "inner cosmology," that "has become too dense to navigate." Since then, my appreciation for that album has increased enormously.
Besides the lyrics--what does this album sound like? There is still a fair amount of synth-pop and disco, similar to recent albums, but "Skeletal Lamping" has much more piano, jangly funk, and falsetto crooning. I prefer the funkier vibe of this album to the synthetic/electronic feel of "Hissing Fauna." Most of the songs here are composed of two or three independent parts, similar to the Beatles' "Happiness Is a Warm Gun." Minus a few disjointed transitions, the album feels like a continuous dance mix (including a few slow numbers).
It's hard to pick stand-out tracks--because each track is composed of multiple parts, and because it feels more natural to listen to the album as a whole rather than a collection of singles. Regardless, I'll try to pick my favorite parts.
The first 3.5 minutes of "Wicked Wisdom" are simply beautiful: "when we get together / it's always hot magic." "For Our Elegant Caste" is very upbeat and danceable, with lots of falsetto and vocal harmonies. The gentle piano of "Touched Something's Hollow" sounds like Barnes is channeling Elliott Smith for 60 seconds, and is both sad and beautiful. In the first four minutes of "An Eluardian Instance," a. k. a. "Our Last Summer as Independents" we hear a loving pop song about how Barnes met his wife. "Gallery Piece" is funky and sexy. The second minute of "Women's Studies Victims," is a groovy piece, spoken rather than sung, with a nice organ part somehow reminiscent of the Velvet Underground. The piano-driven first 90 seconds of "And I've Seen a Bloody Shadow" remind me of another White Album song, "Sexy Sadie." The first 2:30 of "Plastis Wafers" is disco-funk done right, while the funky first half of "Beware Our Nubile Miscreants" has one of the funniest lines in recent memory: "He's the kind of guy who would leave you in a K-Hole to go play Halo in the other room."
I don't use that term "masterpiece" lightly, but I think "Skeletal Lamping" qualifies; it is simultaneously dense, wild, profane, silly, and sweet. After the indie backlash following Outback Steakhouse's use of "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games," Kevin Barnes has flaunted his freakishness in order to keep his indie credibility. This hook-filled, deeply personal album is intentionally radio-unfriendly due to its explicit lyrics and unconventional format; but even without a Clear Channel radio single, without actively seeking mainstream success, Barnes is too talented to avoid the spotlight forever.
Fortunately, things pick up after the end of the first track. "Lamping," what people call "spotlighting" in my neck of the woods, involves using a spotlight to stun and hunt nocturnal woodland critters; in "Skeletal Lamping" Barnes bravely airs his dirty laundry, spotlighting his innermost thoughts in a pornographic, yet poignant, musical collage. You may find yourself with a verse stuck in your head that is too dirty to sing in public. I catch more of the dense, literary lyrics on each listen. Eventually I revisited of Montreal's previous album, "Hissing Fauna" (which I had previously found underwhelming), to understand more of Kevin Barnes's lyrical "inner cosmology," that "has become too dense to navigate." Since then, my appreciation for that album has increased enormously.
Besides the lyrics--what does this album sound like? There is still a fair amount of synth-pop and disco, similar to recent albums, but "Skeletal Lamping" has much more piano, jangly funk, and falsetto crooning. I prefer the funkier vibe of this album to the synthetic/electronic feel of "Hissing Fauna." Most of the songs here are composed of two or three independent parts, similar to the Beatles' "Happiness Is a Warm Gun." Minus a few disjointed transitions, the album feels like a continuous dance mix (including a few slow numbers).
It's hard to pick stand-out tracks--because each track is composed of multiple parts, and because it feels more natural to listen to the album as a whole rather than a collection of singles. Regardless, I'll try to pick my favorite parts.
The first 3.5 minutes of "Wicked Wisdom" are simply beautiful: "when we get together / it's always hot magic." "For Our Elegant Caste" is very upbeat and danceable, with lots of falsetto and vocal harmonies. The gentle piano of "Touched Something's Hollow" sounds like Barnes is channeling Elliott Smith for 60 seconds, and is both sad and beautiful. In the first four minutes of "An Eluardian Instance," a. k. a. "Our Last Summer as Independents" we hear a loving pop song about how Barnes met his wife. "Gallery Piece" is funky and sexy. The second minute of "Women's Studies Victims," is a groovy piece, spoken rather than sung, with a nice organ part somehow reminiscent of the Velvet Underground. The piano-driven first 90 seconds of "And I've Seen a Bloody Shadow" remind me of another White Album song, "Sexy Sadie." The first 2:30 of "Plastis Wafers" is disco-funk done right, while the funky first half of "Beware Our Nubile Miscreants" has one of the funniest lines in recent memory: "He's the kind of guy who would leave you in a K-Hole to go play Halo in the other room."
I don't use that term "masterpiece" lightly, but I think "Skeletal Lamping" qualifies; it is simultaneously dense, wild, profane, silly, and sweet. After the indie backlash following Outback Steakhouse's use of "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games," Kevin Barnes has flaunted his freakishness in order to keep his indie credibility. This hook-filled, deeply personal album is intentionally radio-unfriendly due to its explicit lyrics and unconventional format; but even without a Clear Channel radio single, without actively seeking mainstream success, Barnes is too talented to avoid the spotlight forever.
15 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Skeletal Lamping
21 Oct 2008
Format:Audio CD
This record is the musical equivalent of a transgender hipster knocking back equal doses of ecstasy and caffeine while freaking out to a haggard mash of trance and glam rock. Good news is, taken the right way, these things are all very, very good. Skeletal Lamping is a very enjoyable record and an admirable follow-up to the best-of-2007 Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? Though there was virtually no way Barnes was going to topple his magnum opus a mere year-and-a-half later, he took an earnest stab at creating a record that at least outdoes its predecessor, even if it doesn't outshine it. If you want to spend all your time comparing Skeletal Lamping to Hissing Fauna, you're likely going to find it coming up rather short, but if you take the record on its own merits, you're likely to be very pleased with the output.
First and foremost, this is music on crack. Listening to this album the first time, you have virtually no idea when and where this record is going to go, so don't even bother trying to predict the hooks and shifts. If there is any one thing that Barnes is, it's a hook-writing robot from the future, sent back to our time to save the world from stale indie rock. This man can record 500 hooks per second, and Skeletal Lamping is no exception. When you've gotten through this monster a few times, you'll find it impossible not to sing along through many of the songs' fine moments, which do come up more often than the professional reviews would have you believe. I won't attempt to go through this album on a track-by-track basis, as it has something like 100 different song ideas held within this 15 track album. I would rather evacuate my ocular cavities with a melon baller while listening to N'Sync than try to take this album on one track at a time.
Suffice to say, this is a record that must be heard, and even if it doesn't snag you on the first play through, give it some more spins, and before long you'll find this to be a worthy addition to Of Montreal's recently stellar output.
First and foremost, this is music on crack. Listening to this album the first time, you have virtually no idea when and where this record is going to go, so don't even bother trying to predict the hooks and shifts. If there is any one thing that Barnes is, it's a hook-writing robot from the future, sent back to our time to save the world from stale indie rock. This man can record 500 hooks per second, and Skeletal Lamping is no exception. When you've gotten through this monster a few times, you'll find it impossible not to sing along through many of the songs' fine moments, which do come up more often than the professional reviews would have you believe. I won't attempt to go through this album on a track-by-track basis, as it has something like 100 different song ideas held within this 15 track album. I would rather evacuate my ocular cavities with a melon baller while listening to N'Sync than try to take this album on one track at a time.
Suffice to say, this is a record that must be heard, and even if it doesn't snag you on the first play through, give it some more spins, and before long you'll find this to be a worthy addition to Of Montreal's recently stellar output.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
One Big Girl Talk-esque Mashup of Poppy Goodness
22 Oct 2008
Let me first say that if you were to put this cd in and play it from start to finish, you will really have no idea where the songs start and where they finish. Just when you think there's an "actual" song, it will completely change tempo and key for the last 50 seconds. Such is the way of the new album, and like it or not, "Georgie Fruit" is in full-effect.
If you weren't a fan of "Hissing Fauna..." then I'm not sure you'd be into this album, but it's still worth a listen.
My one major grip with the record is the opener. It starts out fine and dandy for 2:05 seconds, but then it turns into a mess of dissonant chords and pretty much just awful noise... which would be tolerable for about 15 seconds, but instead it continues and intensifies for a FULL THREE MINUTES! If anything, that should be saved for the last song on the disc, but instead they make a terrible decision to start of the album that way. If I wasn't already an Of Montreal fan, I would've shut off the album immediately and probably wouldn't go back, which is unfortunate as I would've missed a lot.
While the songs are scatterbrained, there are plenty of psych-pop hooks and overdubbed vocals sprinkled throughout to keep you entertained. The song Wicked Wisdom starts out nice and funky, and doesn't disappoint through all the in-song changes. Even when the track slows down, the dynamic shift is quite memorable.
My favorite track is "An Eluardian Instance", as I am a big fan of the 'Satanic Panic...' and 'Sunlandic Twins...' albums, and this is the closest they come to that sound on this album. Great track.
Other highlight tracks are "Gallery Piece", with its poppy yet daring vocal melody and "St. Exquisite's Confessions", which features some great lyrics against a nice soft and easy tempo.
There are a few other great tracks here besides what I mentioned, so it's definitely worth a buy!
If you weren't a fan of "Hissing Fauna..." then I'm not sure you'd be into this album, but it's still worth a listen.
My one major grip with the record is the opener. It starts out fine and dandy for 2:05 seconds, but then it turns into a mess of dissonant chords and pretty much just awful noise... which would be tolerable for about 15 seconds, but instead it continues and intensifies for a FULL THREE MINUTES! If anything, that should be saved for the last song on the disc, but instead they make a terrible decision to start of the album that way. If I wasn't already an Of Montreal fan, I would've shut off the album immediately and probably wouldn't go back, which is unfortunate as I would've missed a lot.
While the songs are scatterbrained, there are plenty of psych-pop hooks and overdubbed vocals sprinkled throughout to keep you entertained. The song Wicked Wisdom starts out nice and funky, and doesn't disappoint through all the in-song changes. Even when the track slows down, the dynamic shift is quite memorable.
My favorite track is "An Eluardian Instance", as I am a big fan of the 'Satanic Panic...' and 'Sunlandic Twins...' albums, and this is the closest they come to that sound on this album. Great track.
Other highlight tracks are "Gallery Piece", with its poppy yet daring vocal melody and "St. Exquisite's Confessions", which features some great lyrics against a nice soft and easy tempo.
There are a few other great tracks here besides what I mentioned, so it's definitely worth a buy!
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