Music Review: Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping
Kevin Barnes has finally cracked. He's lobotomized himself and let his rainbow colored brain fluid flow out for everyone to see. It's ugly, beautiful, insane, logical - Skeletal Lamping is an extension of his work laid naked and unapologetic, for the critics to pick apart.
If there was one flaw to last year's Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? it's that it was too calculated, too choreographed. For all its exposure into his personal problems, Barnes didn't challenge the listener very much. Skeletal Lamping, however, is vibrantly dissonant, uncomfortably sexual, stripping away any security the audience might have.
Skeletal's first half is like Barnes dipping his fist into a bucket containing every idea he ever had and beating it angrily against a canvas. "Nonpareil of Favor" roars with crashing waves of guitars, "Wicked Wisdom" bandies vulgarity and fresh break beats about, "Touched Something's Hollow" brings the ghost of John Lennon out of his grave to lament today's damages.
By the middle of Skeletal Lamping, Barnes is playing a psych pop distant cousin to the manic changes of The Fiery Furnaces. "Woman's Studies Victims" is muffled spoken word, "St. Exquisite's Confessions" screams Prince at his most risqué, and "I've Seen A Bloody Shadow" infuses a piano ballad with vocal harmonies recalling Freddie Mercury.
"Plastis Wafers" is where Kevin's black shemale alter ego Georgie Fruit starts dominating the subject matter. He plays out tales of raunchy experimentation to their most superficial joys and emptiest consequences. All the while he is constantly shifting musical gears from dance vamps, to acoustic doldrums and quartet crescendos.
Transcendent first single "Id Engager" ends Skeletal Lamping with some perspective. A bouncy gem breaks the trance and reveals Barnes was simply toying with our emotions the whole time.
With the ridiculous range of being able to bring me into his real life one year and transport me just as easily into the depths of his imagination the next, Kevin Barnes may very well have made it impossible to be entertained by anything but Of Montreal.
Order Skeletal Lamping on Vinyl or CD
