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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
One Big Girl Talk-esque Mashup of Poppy Goodness, October 21, 2008
Let me first say that if you were to put this cd in and play it from start to finish, you will really have no idea where the songs start and where they finish. Just when you think there's an "actual" song, it will completely change tempo and key for the last 50 seconds. Such is the way of the new album, and like it or not, "Georgie Fruit" is in full-effect.
If you weren't a fan of "Hissing Fauna..." then I'm not sure you'd be into this album, but it's still worth a listen.
My one major grip with the record is the opener. It starts out fine and dandy for 2:05 seconds, but then it turns into a mess of dissonant chords and pretty much just awful noise... which would be tolerable for about 15 seconds, but instead it continues and intensifies for a FULL THREE MINUTES! If anything, that should be saved for the last song on the disc, but instead they make a terrible decision to start of the album that way. If I wasn't already an Of Montreal fan, I would've shut off the album immediately and probably wouldn't go back, which is unfortunate as I would've missed a lot.
While the songs are scatterbrained, there are plenty of psych-pop hooks and overdubbed vocals sprinkled throughout to keep you entertained. The song Wicked Wisdom starts out nice and funky, and doesn't disappoint through all the in-song changes. Even when the track slows down, the dynamic shift is quite memorable.
My favorite track is "An Eluardian Instance", as I am a big fan of the 'Satanic Panic...' and 'Sunlandic Twins...' albums, and this is the closest they come to that sound on this album. Great track.
Other highlight tracks are "Gallery Piece", with its poppy yet daring vocal melody and "St. Exquisite's Confessions", which features some great lyrics against a nice soft and easy tempo.
There are a few other great tracks here besides what I mentioned, so it's definitely worth a buy!
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Skeletal Lamping, October 21, 2008
This record is the musical equivalent of a transgender hipster knocking back equal doses of ecstasy and caffeine while freaking out to a haggard mash of trance and glam rock. Good news is, taken the right way, these things are all very, very good. Skeletal Lamping is a very enjoyable record and an admirable follow-up to the best-of-2007 Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? Though there was virtually no way Barnes was going to topple his magnum opus a mere year-and-a-half later, he took an earnest stab at creating a record that at least outdoes its predecessor, even if it doesn't outshine it. If you want to spend all your time comparing Skeletal Lamping to Hissing Fauna, you're likely going to find it coming up rather short, but if you take the record on its own merits, you're likely to be very pleased with the output.
First and foremost, this is music on crack. Listening to this album the first time, you have virtually no idea when and where this record is going to go, so don't even bother trying to predict the hooks and shifts. If there is any one thing that Barnes is, it's a hook-writing robot from the future, sent back to our time to save the world from stale indie rock. This man can record 500 hooks per second, and Skeletal Lamping is no exception. When you've gotten through this monster a few times, you'll find it impossible not to sing along through many of the songs' fine moments, which do come up more often than the professional reviews would have you believe. I won't attempt to go through this album on a track-by-track basis, as it has something like 100 different song ideas held within this 15 track album. I would rather evacuate my ocular cavities with a melon baller while listening to N'Sync than try to take this album on one track at a time.
Suffice to say, this is a record that must be heard, and even if it doesn't snag you on the first play through, give it some more spins, and before long you'll find this to be a worthy addition to Of Montreal's recently stellar output.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
White Album for the New Millenium, January 27, 2009
This is an amazing album, but a challenging one. The end of the very first track, "Nonpareil Of Favor," is three minutes of painful, cacophonous, mess, meant to represent Kevin Barnes's transition into alter ego "Georgie Fruit." Despite any possible artistic merit, it is so annoying that I actually edited the track end-time in iTunes.
Fortunately, things pick up after the end of the first track. "Lamping," what people call "spotlighting" in my neck of the woods, involves using a spotlight to stun and hunt nocturnal woodland critters; in "Skeletal Lamping" Barnes bravely airs his dirty laundry, spotlighting his innermost thoughts in a pornographic, yet poignant, musical collage. You may find yourself with a verse stuck in your head that is too dirty to sing in public. I catch more of the dense, literary lyrics on each listen. Eventually I revisited of Montreal's previous album, "Hissing Fauna" (which I had previously found underwhelming), to understand more of Kevin Barnes's lyrical "inner cosmology," that "has become too dense to navigate." Since then, my appreciation for that album has increased enormously.
Besides the lyrics--what does this album sound like? There is still a fair amount of synth-pop and disco, similar to recent albums, but "Skeletal Lamping" has much more piano, jangly funk, and falsetto crooning. I prefer the funkier vibe of this album to the synthetic/electronic feel of "Hissing Fauna." Most of the songs here are composed of two or three independent parts, similar to the Beatles' "Happiness Is a Warm Gun." Minus a few disjointed transitions, the album feels like a continuous dance mix (including a few slow numbers).
It's hard to pick stand-out tracks--because each track is composed of multiple parts, and because it feels more natural to listen to the album as a whole rather than a collection of singles. Regardless, I'll try to pick my favorite parts.
The first 3.5 minutes of "Wicked Wisdom" are simply beautiful: "when we get together / it's always hot magic." "For Our Elegant Caste" is very upbeat and danceable, with lots of falsetto and vocal harmonies. The gentle piano of "Touched Something's Hollow" sounds like Barnes is channeling Elliott Smith for 60 seconds, and is both sad and beautiful. In the first four minutes of "An Eluardian Instance," a. k. a. "Our Last Summer as Independents" we hear a loving pop song about how Barnes met his wife. "Gallery Piece" is funky and sexy. The second minute of "Women's Studies Victims," is a groovy piece, spoken rather than sung, with a nice organ part somehow reminiscent of the Velvet Underground. The piano-driven first 90 seconds of "And I've Seen a Bloody Shadow" remind me of another White Album song, "Sexy Sadie." The first 2:30 of "Plastis Wafers" is disco-funk done right, while the funky first half of "Beware Our Nubile Miscreants" has one of the funniest lines in recent memory: "He's the kind of guy who would leave you in a K-Hole to go play Halo in the other room."
I don't use that term "masterpiece" lightly, but I think "Skeletal Lamping" qualifies; it is simultaneously dense, wild, profane, silly, and sweet. After the indie backlash following Outback Steakhouse's use of "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games," Kevin Barnes has flaunted his freakishness in order to keep his indie credibility. This hook-filled, deeply personal album is intentionally radio-unfriendly due to its explicit lyrics and unconventional format; but even without a Clear Channel radio single, without actively seeking mainstream success, Barnes is too talented to avoid the spotlight forever.
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