Today was supposed to be the day I’ve been waiting nearly two years for. Today, one of my favorite bands of the New Millennium (even though they’ve been making records since the tail-end of the last decade of the last Millennium) was supposed to releases their ninth studio album. I’ve been looking forward to it since the day in November of ‘06 that I got my hands on an advance of their last album. It’s safe to say that it’s my most anticipated release of the year. And I’m pretty bummed it couldn’t couple with Deerhoof’s Offend Maggie and make October 7th a high-water mark for Indie music in 2008 like it was originally set to.
The album in question is of course Skeletal Lamping, the new full-length from Athens, Georgia-based Indie-Pop troup of Montreal, and while I’m displeased that it’s not hitting store shelves today after all, I’m pleased to report that it lives up to all my expectations. If you’ve been paying close attention you might recall their last LP Hissing Fauna, are You the Destroyer? shared “album of the year” honors with Don’t Give Up from Chicago’s Serengeti & Polyphonic last year. And of Montreal happens to be second only to Hot Chip, another band I’ve praised in this space numerous times, in listens out of all the music in my digital collection according to my Last.fm page. Those numbers may not be the most accurate, but I know how much I love the band and how much I listen to their music. To put it plainly, they had a lot to live up to, and not only did they, they did so and then some.
The day I got the album I immediately dumped it on my iPod and went for a walk. I made it around the corner to the neighborhood post office where I picked up some mail. As I exited the building. stepping back onto the wet sidewalk outside, the second track faded into the third and I was struck with the sudden urge to re-listen to what I’d just heard. With one quick wheel-click I was listening to “Wicked Wisdom” for the second time, wondering “is this what a Prince record from the era between Around the World In a Day and The Black Album would have sounded like if he’d maintained more of the spiky sonic magpie-ism and socially confrontational spirit that imbued Dirty Mind and Controversy with such ardor?” as frontman Kevin Barnes near-shrieked “I’m a motherfucking headliner bitch, you don’t even know it” in my ear. By the time the opening strains of “For Our Elegant Caste,” where Barnes coos “we can do it softcore if you want, but you should know that I go both ways” I decided it was something along those lines.
Anyone familiar with of Montreal should know that Kevin Barnes is a songwriting genius, a densely literate lyricist, an abstract poet, a whimsical subversive, and a master of storytelling. Over the years he’s told third person tales about quirky but relatively normal people, fairies, zombies and scientists, and has more recently given to baring his soul with first person accounts of his own experiences with groupies, starting a family, having a child, the breakup (and reunification) of that family, and battles with depression & other emotional issues. On Hissing Fauna he introduced a separate personality, that of Georgie Fruit — a middle-aged Black former transexual, ex-con and former leader of a fictional Ohio Players-esque ’70s Funk band — which has allowed him to indulge in gender-bending Glam-Rock-y stage antics and given him the space to be as free, freaky, frank, dark, caustically humorous and schizophrenically sexual as he damn well pleases on Skeletal Lamping. According to a blog he posted on MySpace upon the album’s completion this served both as part of the artistic impetus of the album, that is to make a Pop record that’s not predictable, and as a form of personal catharsis, allowing him to face all his “puzzling, contradicting, disturbing, humorous, fantasies… ruminations and observations,” an idea reflected in the title which is an allusion to surprising ones “skeletons” with a night-hunting technique called lamping that involves catching panicked animals off-guard by surprising them with a flood-light.
As reported in a Blogarhythms “re-cap” edition over a year ago, Skeletal Lamping isn’t just another collection of songs. Almost every one of the album’s 15 marked tracks is made up of a number of different mini-tracks which allow for countless combination of aesthetic disciplines or genre influences to inform a single song. Musically it reflects the progression the band’s sound has made over their last three albums which have found Barnes, armed with his laptop, running the show as something of a one-man band. Thudding kick-drums, chattering hi-hats, chopped-up beats, crunchy programming, overlapping tiers of ornate keys and synths, cavernous basslines and a diversity of guitar tones are abundant. Most often the album sounds like a synthesis of “Faberge Falls for Shuggie,” “Bunny Ain’t No Kind of Rider,” “Gronlandic Edit” and “Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games” from Hissing Fauna… and The Sunlandic Twins respectively. But the surupy Funk, psychedelic Soul, bubblegummy Pure-Pop, Electro-infused Surf-Rock, insistent Indie-Disco throb and wildly bucking clatter of laptop-programmed percussion that marked those songs mate with a parade of other sounds both familiar and totally new to of Montreal’s arsenal, including Kraut-Rock, Psyche-Rock, Baroque-Pop, Noise, Post-Punk, New Wave, Synthpop, Soft-Rock, muted piano balladry and even Country-tinged acoustic Folk-Rock, from song to song.
At the center of it all is Kevin Barnes’ singular songwriting, which is always worthy of endless dissection, and vocals which stretch between a conversational talk-croon, a fierce falsetto and even higher pitched animal howls and screams. And he holds absolutely nothing back, spewing a deluge of lyrics concerned with debauched (some might argue degenerate) sex, personal identity, gender and race issues, outsider culture, alienation, anger, vulnerability, honesty, depression, infatuation, love, lust and more, whipped about by a whirlwind of coy whispers, cum-hither-coos, exaggerated drawls, nasally whines, demanding shouts and other throat-savaging vocal pyrotechnics.
If I’ve piqued your interest and you want a copy of your own you’re going to have to wait until October 21st before you can purchase Skeletal Lamping. I wasn’t aware of this until I’d already written most of this post because I’ve been far too busy actually listening to their album to bother to check of Montreal’s website with any frequency. Apparently Polyvinyl Records just wasn’t able to get the thing manufactured in time to meet the original October 7th release date. The manufacturing issues probably stem from the fact that the album is being offered with all manner of deluxe packaging options including “a table top floral beast, a lantern, a collection of wall decals, a stallion shaped print, a collection of pins, and a clothing and tote bag line” designed by Barnes’ artist brother from which to choose.
I guess making awe-inspiring music just isn’t enough for of Montreal, they want fans who make the effort to support them financially to get their money’s worth and be treated to something much more special than a CD in a jewel case or a folder full of MP3s accompanied by a tiny JPG. And for that, they can be forgiven a bit of tardiness.
