Skeletal Lamping - of Montreal

Rating - 7.8

“Lamping is the name of a rather dreadful hunting technique where hunters go into the forest at night, flood an area in light, then shoot, or capture, the animals as they panic and run from their hiding places” said Kevin Barnes, of Montreal’s lead singer. So their new album, Skeletal Lamping, refers to Barnes’s own revealing style of songwriting, one that leaves no topic of sexuality untouched. Barnes’s Bowie-esque sexual ambiguity has always been prevalent; on 1997’s Cherry Peel, he proclaimed “Tim, wish you were born a girl/So I could of been your boyfriend”, released a flamboyant concept album in 1999 entitled The Gay Parade, and finally last year on the nearly perfect Hissing Fauna..., Barnes howled “Now that the parachute has opened/Don’t it make you feel good?”. If of Montreal fans thought those were forward statements, then they should be prepared for nearly an hour of funky, scatterbrained sexual innuendos from Barnes on the new record.

Using characters and ideas created on the second half of Hissing Fauna..., the story of Skeletal Lamping revolves around Georgie Fruit, a black soul singer, presumably from the 1970s, who goes through multiple sex changes. Georgie, like Barnes, can’t figure out exactly what he wants. At times he is blunt, saying “We can do it soft-core if you want/But you should know I take it both ways”, but there are also moments of sincerity, such as the standout track “Touched Something’s Hollow” where Barnes laments “Why am I so damaged, girl?/Why am I so troubled, girl?”. In a similar way to “City Bird” from 2003’s Satanic Panic in the Attic, Barnes achieves a dynamic within the album by constantly going over the top, freaking out, cracking a joke, and then crashing to a hung-over moment of mortality. The difference here is he sometimes achieves this model within the length of one song.

With Skeletal Lamping Barnes has definitely delivered a collection brimming with genius, and has solidified his place as one our generation’s foremost creative musicians. However, where his missteps used to start and end within the context of one track, they are now scattered about, disrupting the listener’s enjoyment of the album rather than pulling them further in. Ironically, of Montreal’s best tracks of the year (the acoustic “Feminine Effects” and the M.I.A. cover “Jimmy”) are not included on this album. Finally, as of Montreal have progressed from a psychedelic rock band to a definitive electro-pop group, they have lost much of the muscle in their sound, something which Barnes acknowledges just a few seconds into “Wicked Wisdom” when he shouts “Process it!”. It’s difficult to say where of Montreal will be heading after a sprawling effort like Skeletal Lamping, which is shaping up to be one of the most difficult releases of the year, but as long as Kevin Barnes keeps challenging himself and his audience, they will remain at the forefront of the electro-pop movement.
(10/17/08)