Skeletal Lamping

Album review

During the closing moments of 2007's Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, bandleader Kevin Barnes introduced an alter ego, a flamboyant singer by the name of Georgie Fruit. One year later, that character runs amok on Skeletal Lamping, having wrenched the spotlight away from Barnes' sugary pop and trained it on an ambitious hybrid of glam rock, experimental R&B, and Scissor Sisters-styled sex-funk. Barnes sounds truly uninhibited under the Fruit guise, making declarations like "I'm just a black she-male!" with flamboyant confidence. Such a shift in direction marks Of Montreal's ascent into the psychedelic clouds where Ziggy Stardust once flew -- only this time, the listener catches a ride on the back of a transgendered Prince fanatic whose songs are fragmented and confusing, yet still peppered with irresistible hooks.
Like the album's cover art (an origami-influenced billfold whose flaps unfurl to form a giant floral display), Skeletal Lamping demands attention by being purposely puzzling. The music is extravagant and elaborate; each song is comprised of multiple vignettes, many of them completely different in style, and each track spills into the next. It's interesting to watch the pieces fit together -- to pinpoint the exact second where one song ends and another one begins -- but that's tantamount to looking at the adjacent parts of puzzle pieces without standing back to witness the full picture. So while Skeletal Lamping sounds impressive as it unfolds, what ultimately takes shape is a somewhat erratic album, filled with quick flashes of pop melody but mostly devoid of truly realized songs (although several tracks, particularly the buoyant "An Eluardian Instance," do come close). Whether or not one enjoys Skeletal Lamping depends on the listener's tolerance for unchecked ambition and left-field experimentation, both of which are emphasized here to the songs' detriment. Of Montreal have rarely sounded so free, so unrestrained, but Kevin Barnes has also never flaunted lyrics like "I'm so sick of sucking the dick of this cruel, cruel city" and "I want you to be my pleasure-puss, I want to know what it's like to be inside you, I wanna give you that oooh la!" This is a love-it-or-lump-it album, a polarizing effort that -- depending on personal preference -- is either irresistibly attractive or overly pretentious.

© Andrew Leahey /TiVo