Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping

i'm so excited

I kind of wonder if they could ever top a lyric such as "physics makes us all its' bitches".

what is it currently with the indie bands and the naked running around in the country?

Creepy, cartoonish, nakedness - yeah - that's pretty much how I felt when I got dragged to this concert by my wife. Some good songs by these guys - but way over hyped and seriously strange adoring fans.

I wasn't a huge fan of the last one. I thought the entire second half--everything from "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" onward--mostly missed. But I admired that Barnes was trying to push himself somewhere. I'm looking forward to this.

Kevin Barnes' high-end, yelpy vocal mannerisms bug me. The music can be too sugary/cartoonish and cutesy for me, too. But I see the appeal, and I'll download the new disc.

Am I the only one who thinks they really would be better off as a singles band?

I'm pretty pumped about this. Gonna try to convince the wife to go see them with me when they come to Austin. I think she'll dig they're glamminess.

Corrected:

Kevin Barnes' high-end, yelpy vocal mannerisms bug me. The music can be too sugary/cartoonish and cutesy for me, too. But I see the appeal, and I'll download the new disc.

Haha. We'll, I'll probably download the new disc. S'alright.

"HIssing Fauna" was probably the most adventurous (and quite possibly my favourite) album of last year. I'm really psyched for this. I wonder if he'll have got his family out of his system yet?

If you were to look at the tracklisting without any other information, you'd know it was an of montreal album.

Has this leaked yet? I know there was a listening party in NYC, and it usually hits the internet shortly after that.

Damn I'm impatient.

Women's Studies Victims

Indie and intriguing.

I'm looking forward to hear this record too. I liked the last one, but my favourite is still "Satanic Panic...".

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/download/142703-premiere-of-montreal-id-engager-mp3-stream

thanks!

my local cd store had a listening party tonight but i couldnt go :(

this song is rad

i was at a local cd store and they were playing it. there's a long instrumental track toward the beginning, a little steve reich & roll, that's absolutely amazing. it sounded more streamlined and future funk than the last two busier ones--lots of nice big bass songs to blast in the car and at parties. no way to say for sure but overall my impression was the roll he's been on since sunlandic twins is still going

i like how he's giving us months to digest before it's even released. a certain other band released an album almost a year to the day before this one's official street date; this move might have the opposite effect. anyone who cares will already know what s/he thinks about skeletal lamping whereas with in rainbows people's receptions weren't jammed by critical consensus. possibly pretty bold, if not just me seeing shapes in clouds

of montreal got the looies boy they not trampin

of rainbows in montreal

Downloading now.

A complete and utter clusterfuck.

Would you expect anything less?

Well yeah, but even next to Hissing Fauna this one is all over the place.

True, I'm halfway through and no song has caught me yet... in fact, the only thing I've discovered is that homeboy swings both ways.

This is not the kind of record that will grab you on the first listen, obviously. But so far I like it, a lot. He managed to outweird Hissing Fauna!

OK d/l now, finally home from work and on pins and needles.

don't know if it is weirder, just not as aggro.

After a couple of listens, it doesn't seem weirder than Hissing Fauna did at that point. It's just that there's so many hooks to ingest and digest !

LOVED it on first listen, even if it has become gayer. it's all over the place so this one will take awhile to really sink in.

Half kinda Coquelicot, half Hissing Fauna. Liking on a first listen.

Is this even more in the Architecture in Helsinki (ugh) / Fiery Furnances "let's have 10 songs in one song, haha yaywoo!" style? I don't really like that style.

don't let king boy pato catch you dissing AiH, he wants to marry them

He wants to marry them? I hope he likes multiple personality people who change the subject every 35 seconds to yet ANOTHER lighthearted yaywoo subject.

doesn't sound anything like coquelicot. unless I have a different version. it certainly is not sexy, was that his goal, instead he's a bit like a modern day pat boone but I still really like it.

The lyrics are kinkier than the music, I think the sexiest song they've done to date musically is Labrynthian Pomp, it has a confident and playful swagger... you know, like one of those sex shop superstores personified... into an Of Montreal song...

Not sure where that was going and not sure if I want to find out.

Coquelicot in the allovertheplaceness of it. Although tbf I've not listened to Coquelicot for a long time, I'm going by my recollection of my reaction to it.

I am not feeling this of Montreal record. :( I hate that Fiery Furnaces thing too. So many good ideas and none of them last long enough for me to really get into it. It’s like listening to an awesome song on the radio and then somebody switches the channel just when it gets to the good bit. Over and over and over again. BoOooO.

I think it's great.

It did indeed sound like an end-of-a-career megamix for the first 5-6 listens. Now that I'm getting used to it, it all seems pretty natural and unforced to my ears.
I'm also impressed by the evolution of this band towards such a distinctive and unique sound : who else sounds even remotely close to them ?

I had a real Prince moment listening to one of the tracks, but unfortunately I forget which.

Had a second listen now that i'm less cranky/sleepy and using proper headphones. Liking it a *lot* more now. The first two tracks are pretty great - A+ move putting the noisy jam right at the top. Nice keyboards on track 5. Still feels overwhelming though.

I'm also impressed by the evolution of this band towards such a distinctive and unique sound : who else sounds even remotely close to them ?

I'm pretty impressed that they appear to be making their best work seven or eight albums into their career and Barnes doesn't seem to be getting even close to a creative burnout yet.

this is really not the kind of band i tend to like but i LOVED Hissing Fauna, it took me completely by surprise how much i liked it. i don't really like the bits and pieces i've heard of the earlier stuff so if this is like the last record but moreso, i'm excited.

i just got this in my inbox:

If you caught the recent Pitchforkmedia.com article you know that the release date has been changed from October 7 to October 21. Last Friday we received news from our printer that the 32-panel CD package had been printed from the wrong file. The news was very disappointing but we soldiered on, moved the release date, and had the entire run of CDs reprinted.

that pitchfork article

Verges on terrible, but "Gallery Piece" has that unexpected Smiths sample.

have you seen this packaging, too good to pass up:

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/145992-of-montreal-unveil-skeletal-lamping-collection

third play and this is getting seriously good, have narrowed it down to something like 9

I didn't like it when I first got it. Now I cannot stop playing it. What is it with me and "grower" albums this year?

I still hate Kevin Barnes, though, I still want to punch his sexually obsessed little lights out. But, erm, I have to come to realise that this is because one hates most in other people what one fears most in oneself. I hate him because his lyrics hold a sick mirror up to mine own perverted psyche in a way that makes me feel really uncomfortable.

And yet I am learning to like, even love it.

I hate him because his lyrics hold a sick mirror up to mine own perverted psyche

he's just playin'

(with u)

for our elegant caste -> touched something's hollow -> an eluardian instance
sooo good

after many plays, my favourite 3 tracks also form a run: triphallus, to punctuate! -> and i've seen a bloody shadow -> plastis wafers

i think plastis wafers is the best song

i won't argue that. you'll be hard pressed to find a bad stretch on the whole thing. i really love how the songs transition into each other

there's no bad stretch, but imo the second half of the record is significantly better than the first

and yeah, the transitions are nicely done (if a little damaging to any playlist aspirations)

fwiw my favourite songs outside that run are "women's studies victims" and "beware our nubile miscreants" but there is something good about every song here

eh

ok enthusiasm has cooled

the problem is that while every song has good bits, no song is actually flat-out brilliant, they all have flaws

and i've been searching for an '08 playlist contender

the songs only really work in context

that was quick!
and i think you're taking the wrong attitude into this. it's not the kind of record that has normal "songs" so picking them out to put in a playlist is rather futile.

i like the first 90 seconds of this album

embrace ambition!

kevin i am only too happy to embrace ambition, and the album itself is agreeably far-reaching. however, much as the songs often dazzle, as songs they frequently lack the ambition to dazzle in a sustained and constantly arresting manner, and what sounds really quite novel on a listen-through becomes on closer inspection a russian doll of songs that have to finish each other when the previous one aimlessly runs out of steam. this manner of songwriting works quite well for the album experience, but when songs are brought into comparison, their awkwardness and even unoriginality begins to show. i think a big part of the problem is that for an album of this type, the sound variety is surprisingly limited. there's a conceptual homogeneity in the lyrical content, the funk/disco rhythms, the sometimes crunchy, sometimes surfy guitars and the upbeat pop melodies that gives mood to the album, but there's only too many times you can hear the same echo effect, the same disco beat, the same falsetto wail. no one song stands apart. maybe i repeated the album too many times in one sitting, but it definitely lost its lustre by the end. the big difference between this record and, say, the fiery furnaces' "widow city" is that the latter record had songs. sorry. it's still a pretty good album! i admire its endeavors.

i've also realised that "nonpareil of favor" is by far the most successful song here, so i might stick that on my playlist. not particularly surprised that it and "id engager" were the myspace cuts.

well said, but if i may return to my point: if you're judging this on individual songs, you're missing the point.
and i can't say I agree with it lacking sonic variety. it throws just about everything into play here, from the regular indie-pop to no age-type noise to funky prince-isms to avant R&B to hip hop to disco to whatever (some may say this is to the record's detriment, which i suppose is a valid opinion to take. i'd disagree, of course). the point here is the record is supposed to be different in that it changes course right as one gets comfortable with what it's doing; if you don't think this works (which i think is what you were getting at) then that's totally okay, because at least you took the time to engage with it. i personally think the songs work fine on their own, though, and the fragments within each song fit in place rather well, esp after repeated listens.

if you're judging this on individual songs, you're missing the point.

i appreciate the album is better listened to as a single entity. but i deliberately "missed the point" in order to gauge the designated parts that make the whole. when looking at the album this way, it loses such ground that the big picture is also tainted.

it throws just about everything into play here

ah really.

from the regular indie-pop to no age-type noise to funky prince-isms to avant R&B to hip hop to disco to whatever

"just about everything", huh

it changes course right as one gets comfortable with what it's doing

yeah, sort of (although it repeats itself far more than you seem able to credit), and i was initially spellbound by the fact it was changing up so readily, what's becoming clearer is that it rarely changes to something fitting, surprising or challenging. but that's a subjective issue.

i wish he had the ambition to actually write songs instead of just stringing a bunch of random annoying parts together

I loved Hissing Fauna, it was my favorite record of 2007. But this record is just no fun at all. It's the definition of a slog.

What was so great about Hissing Fauna were all these personal confessional-style lyrics melded with this really odd new wave/funk music. It doesn't work when he's singing from the POV of a transsexual soul singer. Song 1 is great, though.

Thing is, I think he's proven over and over again that he has the ability to write great pop songs - he's been doing that for album after album for ages now.

I *like* the disjointed sketch-like nature of this album, it's one of the things that really appeals about it. Because it's so non-linear, it's much more like the human thought process. He really does manage to capture the feeling of being inside his head - well, I'm assuming that because the random disjointedness is so much like the inside of *my* head. Though doesn't happen in these concentrated bursts of "I'm going to think about this for 3 minutes and 20 seconds with a verse - chorus - middle eight structure" - it's a linked causal chain of often quite random and disjointed thoughts, stories, personalities, unspeakable urges, bits of memories all floating up in bubbles.

This album is like... if I ever wanted to try to describe to someone what it was actually like, being bipolar, suffering from violent moodswings - the music of this album perfectly captures that. But I can understand how it would be disorienting or off-putting to someone whose brain didn't work that way.

I didn't even realise that he was supposed to be writing songs from the POV of a transsexual soul singer until I stumbled, though an unrelated link on a friend's blog, to the artist that does their costumes. The lyrics, to me, work without a back story. Because that's the way my brain works, too, that there are various personalities running rampant inside everyone's head - who doesn't have an inner drag queen who gets released when you walk into a fabric shop full of sequins in a dodgy part of Soho? Or maybe that's just me.

is this album being overlooked this year on end of year lists? granted it's no Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? but it's still pretty good.

i don't know if it's better, but i might like it just as much or even more.

Best moment: On Eluardian Instance where Kevin sings "Now I'm viewing my memory real in reverse/Scrolling backwards..."

real = reel

new EP out next Monday:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/612sko1d2vL._SS500_.jpg

1. First Time High (Reconstructionist Remix of "An Eluardian Instance") 4:03
2. First Time High (Of Chicago Acoustic Version) 4:34
3. Gallery Piece (JB Remix) 3:54
4. Gallery Piece (Long Version) 8:15
5. Gallery Piece (Instrumental)

I was gonna site SFJ's essay in this week's New Yorker.

i googled SFJ and got:

Sfj Recovery. Sfj welcomes you | How A Meth Addict Thinks And Feels | How to quit using meth | Photo Page 3. Welcome. This is my personal private website. ...

the sfj essay is a nice appreciation piece. not gonna blow the mind of an already-serious fan, but a good read if you're not already a fan

Seriously starting to love this album, although I've chopped in half because as a whole it's too much like hard work. The bi-polar aspect, the fact that it's like they wrote as many great chorus as possible and stuck them together with noise and funk, the artwork, I like it all. I kind of wish more artists would let logic fly out the window and let out their inner drag queen (or personal equivilant, like r kelly letting out his inner mental physcopath sex fiend making soap operas.)

So, Hissing Fauna next? Does any other Elephant 6 sound like this? I can barely stand Neutral Milk Hotel anymore after loving that stuff to death when I was 17. Or should I just go get more Prince albums?

i dont know much abt of montreal but srsly you cant go wrong w/ getting more prince albums

Get Hissing Fauna next, yeah, in addition to more Prince albums.

hissing fauna yes, more prince albums yes, elephant six in general no, NMH no no and no.

are you the one who asked about this on last.fm? i would have said try hissing fauna before skeletal lamping, but yeah, definitely give that a go next. it's not nearly as initially tiring as skeletal lamping either, and i know exactly what you mean when you say it's 'hard work' - it took a few run-throughs before i realized that all those digressions are ultimately worth it.
to my knowledge, no other elephant 6 band is going in this direction atm, which is why this direction they've been taking was such a big deal/minor controversy among e6 purists (lol). oM's last four records all show an increasing amount of this break from e6 tradtion (tho they were always perhaps the best of the e6'ers anyway, if you love his songwriting you can def enjoy stuff like 'the gay parade' too).
i like how you enjoy his 'inner drag queen...' etc because one of the many many reasons i love this dude is his cmoplete lack of inhibition as a songwriter and performer. some people conflate that w/ a lack of a filter, but that's really not the case.
anyway if you're looking for other artists who use the skeletal lamping type of stlye, idk listen to the fiery furnaces if you havent. i'm not huge on them but i really like some of their work and their "stuff as many hooks into one song as possible" might appeal to you too. i believe kevin barnes named them as an influence in an interview, actually

btw i saw them live for the first time a couple of weeks ago and had a blast - they were so much fun and kevin barnes seemed like a lovely, lovely person and not at all as insufferable/pretentious as he usually comes across in interviews.

Yeah, that was me. :) I only went for SL over HF because it was the only one my local record store had.

I like the fiery furnaces but there is not emotional connection. They seem 'nice'. Whereas with this record it goes a lot further than that.

(I know it's shocking I only own Sign O' The Times and a Greatest Hits on the other front though.)

this is a boring answer but ya need purple rain dude

I know. ILM for me is basically becoming a giant list of records I know I need and know i'll love.

still my favourite album of last year.

I can't believe I haven't picked up on a Fiery Furnaces/Of Montreal connection before. It's pretty obvious, though. There was always something intangible I disliked about both bands, and I'm still not sure what it is, but I think they both have it...

I love Of Montreal but not so hot on Fiery Furnaces. The thing with FF is that their schema seems very wilful in its tempo/key changes whereas OM's stuff feels like more of a logical conclusion to Kevin Barnes's innate songwriting style, something he's been honing for years and years. I don't find Skeletal Lamping to be that exhausting, in fact it's prog-rock songwriting with all the fat trimmed off. The poster upthread who mentioned Kevin's complete lack of inhibition in his songwriting was OTM. The stream-of-conscious, many-voices-screaming-to-be-heard fits with this kind of music style. FF generally sound clunky and awkward by comparison.

And yeah. they're a formidable live band.

all of my thoughts come from foreign hosts
now i feel just like a ghost
now i feel just like a ghost
now i feel
just like a ghost

If the whole of this record was as good as its opening track and second-half, it'd be in my 2008 top 10 without a shadow of a doubt

i wanted to check out this record but noticed that the dude on the cover doesn't have weiner.

lool

what a great album

This is still great BTW. Looking forward to finding out what Kevin does next. I kind of feel as though my life has been led vicariously through these last couple of records. This is just conjecture, but I reckon if he's still working from an autobiographical slant, his reunion with his family will beckon in a much more mellow record.

This is a completely amazing record. Prince & Julian Cope gathered together in a cave & grooving with a pict. And a tremendous amount of LSD. And things.

still completely love this album, one of the most satisfying releases from 2008. i feel the only true way to here this record is to listen to it from beginning to end, despite the craziness.

here hear

Jon Brion producing the new one is promising, dude could use a collaborator who's a little more even-keeled.

i just heard this, apparently it's on the Bonus EP of this album?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrnV_93jXgk

saw them last night, this is the only thread that came up on google. it was great- i totally dropped off after Skeletal Lamping, so I put together a spotify playlist of the set they were playing this month. mix of stuff from the last five years. the Paralytic Stalks tracks were really really good, and afaik he doesn't bust those out very often. their new EDM shit is lowkey extremely good. Kevin Barnes didn't play guitar for most of the set, the band was behind a bank of lights and synth setups. the second half of the set was hissing fauna mostly- was psyched they played 'Du Og Meg' in the encore. it was a sold out show, good going for a career band that has been completely abandoned by the press. everyone in there knew the lyrics to the songs that p4k tossed off.

oh they're fkn *incredible* live yeah