Skeletal Lamping

The provocative and bright indie-pop artists

One of the brightest and many-minded American indie-pop bands Of Montreal was founded in Athens, Georgia, USA, in 1997. Initially, it included only one member, its constant leader Kevin Barnes. He titled the band in honor of one woman from Montreal, with whom he had an affair. Later other musicians joined him, although the lineup of Of Montreal saw many substitutes during the years. The music of the artists gave food for mind to the listeners, while their scenic images, especially the one by Barnes, were the source of public’s interest for the command. Thus, once Barnes performed several Las Vegas shows fully naked. After the album Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? of 2007, Barnes elaborated the scenic alter ego called Georgie Fruit. Citing the artist, it is a man with a rich life experience, an Afro-American about forty years old or more, who once changed his sex, but later came back to his masculine essence. With the help of Georgie Fruit, the artist expressed his feelings about the painful divorce to his wife, narrated about his fears and his loneliness. The same provocative personage became the clue person on the new disc by Of Montreal titled Skeletal Lamping. This time, with his assistance, Kevin sublimes his erotic fantasies and struggles the long-suffered complexes.

Skeletal Lamping: sexual lyrics and eclectic tracks

The disc Skeletal Lamping is built like a classical pop album, but it should not confuse the listeners. Actually, each of the fifteen songs consists of a number of fragments that differ in genre, style and rhythm and may seem not to be connected. The topics, aroused on the long-play, are also different - but they are united by the theme of personal relations. The album opens with the daring experimental track Nonpareil Of Favour, on which Barnes’ vocals reminds the one of Prince, while the classical pop rock harmonies and unexpectedly followed by the fierce stream of guitar sounds. Short, but memorable track Touched Something’s Hollow can be best characterized as the touching ballad in the manner of John Lennon. The indie-pop song Gallery Piece narrates of Bernes’ erotic fantasies about his object of passion. It is hard to write more shameful and sexual dedication to someone you date. The tune Triphallus, To Punctuate! can be called the combination of danceable funk in the style of The Scissor Sisters and piano rock a-la Elton John in the infectious chorus. The song Plastis Wafer became one of the catchiest pop moments of the album, where the bright melody is at first followed by the synthesizers and later - by the psychedelic rock. In the hip-hop-R&B song Beware Our Nubile Miscreants, devoted to personal relations between the high school students, Barnes again shocks the listener with the sexual lyrics. The disc finishes with the single ID Engager, fulfilled in the mixture of indie pop and psychedelia.

Unbelievably eclectic and concentrated disc by Of Montreal

The mixture of different styles, this time with the slant to funk and psychedelic music, makes the disc Skeletal Lamping not only highly eclectic, but also enormously concentrated. These fragments, combined into multi-segment tracks, where one can here even the white noise, leave a mixed and contradictory feeling after the listening to the entire full-length. One gets the steady illusion that the play list included not only one new disc by Of Montreal, but several different long-plays - may be even by miscellaneous artists. Well, this disc has so many ideas and tunes that it would be enough for several full-blooded albums. However, the uniting concept and the central personage Georgie Fruit make the issue Skeletal Lamping corporate and finished. Besides, the extravagantly sexual lyrics by Of Montreal became the improvised way out, through which Barnes sublimed his sexual fantasies, thus exorcising these swirling ideas from his mind. The title of the disc - Skeletal Lamping - witnesses this fact. No doubt, that the expression Skeletons In The Cupboard needs no explanation. While Lamping, or Spotlighting, is an original type of hunting for the nocturnal beasts. The bright light blinds the animals, they lose orientation due to panic and the hunter shoots them. This is a rather radical and contradictory way of fighting one’s fantasies and phobias - well, as everything Of Montreal do.