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Of Montreal

Skeletal Lamping  Hear it Now

RS: 3.5of 5 Stars

2008

Play View Of Montreal's page on Rhapsody

Kevin Barnes is a married white man whose alter ego is a black transsexual named Georgie Fruit. Transformations come easily to the Of Montreal frontman: Over the past 11 years, he's seamlessly morphed from low-fi indie rocker to quirky prog-pop star, and now on Skeletal Lamping he's a glam-funk warrior, drenched in the sounds and sexuality of Prince, Freddie Mercury and Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie. ("We can do it soft-core if you want/But you should know that I go both ways," he trills on "For Our Elegant Caste.") A soulful romp through psychedelic melodies and sprawling noise-scapes, Skeletal is also a whimsical, Girl Talk-style pastiche, with 15 tracks that consist of a multitude of song fragments. The nine-part "Beware Our Nubile Miscreants" opens with peaceful strings before jolting into a tuneless vamp, then snapping into an echo-soaked wail. And Barnes' lyrics are just as seductively schizophrenic: "I want to ... make you paranoid and say the sweetest things," he sings on "Gallery Piece." And somewhere in the glorious friction between these contradictions, he's in ecstasy.



CARYN GANZ

(Posted: Oct 16, 2008)

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