Free Press

Issue date: 11/3/08 Section: Arts and Entertainment

Not even the previous album, Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? could have prepared us for the newly released trashy-pop funk-fest better known as Skeletal Lamping. Beyond Of Montreal's usual tendency to evolve their genre, album-to-album, leadman Kevin Barnes pushes the envelope with hypersexuality, hyperactivity, and a very short attention span. Many songs are structured in 30 to 60 second vignettes with radically different melodies and almost seamless transitions. The album's opener, "Nonpareil of Favor", warms up the listener with two mini-songs followed by a 3-minute noise section.
As if the long noise break wasn't enough, the following song, "Wicked Wisdom", serves as one of the greater challenges, with a total of 6 songs stretched across 5 minutes; however, the quick spray of melodies soon become very infectious. Other songs on the album follow the similarly confusing format including "Triphallus, To Punctuate!", "Women's Studies Victims", and "Plastis Wafer".
There are some songs that follow more traditional structures such as "For Our Elegant Caste", a dance song utilizing a mix of funk, African drum, and quirk-pop. "Id Engager" is an utterly flamboyant disco with Barnes singing out during the chorus, "can't help it if it's true/don't want to be your man/just want to play with you". These lyrics epitomize the sexual ambiguity expressed through the entire album. At the beginning of "St. Exquisite's Confessions", Barnes starts out with shocking cries of the fictional she-male, Georgie Fruit. The entire album follows the sexually confused life of Georgie and plays out like an erotic musical.
To anyone familiar with Of Montreal's live shows, they know of Kevin Barnes' fondness for David Bowie through his garb and theatrics. Skeletal Lamping could be declared as a crazy, funked-up extension of Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust." There are many Bowie-isms to be found in songs such as the melancholic "Touched Something's Hollow" and the moody "And I've Seen a Bloody Shadow".
The follow-up to Hissing Fauna is a bit of a paradox in the beginning, but after some contemplation and careful listening, the entire piece begins to make more sense. For fans that have been faithfully following the band's incredible transformation over the past 10 years, this should be seen as their most ambitious work yet and a much-needed evolution of pop music.

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