Sunday, November 02, 2008
A+E, Music, Reviews

OF MONTREAL

“SKELETAL LAMPING” (POLYVINYL)

If the best art transports the audience to another time and place, then Of Montreal’s new album qualifies as a classic.
  
Although there are 15 tracks, these songs go through so many, often abrupt internal transitions and twists that it seems like there are many more. Frontman/auteur Kevin Barnes borrows liberally from Prince, 10 cc, David Bowie, Frank Zappa and Queen to take listeners to a bizarre Technicolor world of his own invention. Complex, generally unpredictable keyboard-driven pieces lead down one path, only to unexpectedly change direction and scurry somewhere else without rhyme, reason or foreshadowing.
 
   If that’s your cup of meat, as Zappa once said, this is a mighty sumptuous stew. It’s a glossy, candy-coated, psychedelic pastiche, a sonic landscape of Day-Glo characters and glam influences. Pop music seldom gets quite as fizzy or intricate, and even those who dismiss this as impossibly over-the-top have to concede that Barnes is a studio wizard, if perhaps not a true star.

   Lyrics flirt with sex and, well, mostly sex, as backing voices dart in and out of the mix like buzzing mosquitoes. Horns and synth basses bring both the funk and bizarre interludes as Barnes sings obtuse lyrics that might not even make sense to him.

     “I wanted to make a record that could truly surprise a listener, to create something that was … enraging, joyous, discomforting, playful, lovely, unpleasant, freaky, mesmeric …” writes the singer in the disc’s press release.

    Mission accomplished. 2.5 STARS—Hal Horowitz