-- always a sense of a language that you don't quite know, likeOf Montreal leader follows
break-through with less-danceable kaleidoscope of freakideakiness;
declares self black she-male
A consciousness set to shuffle, of
Montreal’s Skeletal Lamping pours in wave after wave of sudden
layered harmonies, disco-McCartney basslines, glammy confessions and
impenetrable twin-talk too intense to characterize any one song as
any one thing. “I’m just a black she-male, and I don’t know
what you people are all about,” mastermind Kevin Barnes frets on
“Wicked Wisdom.” Though far from hookless, Skeletal Lamping
dispenses with the easy choruses of last year’s Hissing Fauna, Are
You the Destroyer? in favor of overload and come-ons like “you’re
the only one with whom I’d role-play Oedipus Rex.” Barnes
experiments ruthlessly, usually via the short-attention span jumps
that characterized his pre-liberation work. Amid its admirably
complex compositional compressions, Skeletal Lamping feels like a
triple-LP sprawler, despite clocking in at less than an hour. For
those who have the patience to hang with Barnes and his freak-outs,
it could be a masterpiece.
Watch the video for Of Montreal's "Id Engager" here.