Of Montreal: Skeletal Lamping

Of 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.