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Album Review

Of Montreal
Skeletal Lamping Polyvinyl Records

Article written by Paul M - Sep 28, 2008

Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping

Phew! Not one to rest on his laurels, having rightly been lauded for last year's stunning 'Hissing fauna, are you the destroyer?', Kevin Barnes (who is essentially Of Montreal) has produced an album so disturbing, unconventional and damned good that it's difficult to know where to start in describing it.

Nominally listed as fifteen separate tracks, it feels like closer to fifty, or just one, as everything pretty much segues into another while within the 'tracks' themselves, there are so many changes in pace and style, that one catchy hook is always quickly replaced by another completely different one.

It's primarily a dance album, with pumping funky basslines and frolicking disco rhythms underlying Barnes' meandering yelped vocals and harmonies but equally there are MOR, psychedelic rock, trash and glam interludes. There are influences (Bowie, Prince, Moroder, Queen, the Stones, Lennon, ELO, etc) but this being Barnes, it is way too graphic to be anything as mainstream as them. With an obvious nod to Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, Barnes has invented the character Georgie Fruit, around whom this concept album revolves. A forty something black man who has been through multiple sex changes, his adventures are often so explicit you frequently find yourself thinking "Did he really say that?", with no boundaries recognised and any orifice apparently fair game for the Barnes' whore-like persona. It's a grizzly but gripping, musically shapeshifting hour; a man baring everything, no matter how perverse or unpleasant we may consider his antics to be. It is without doubt though, the nailed on album of the year.

Links:
http://www.ofmontreal.net
http://www.myspace.com/ofmontreal