Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping

Just how much of a PR-friendly phrase is ‘fucked up’? Most of us are pretty liberal in our tastes; we like to think that we can accept something that the media markets to us as ‘innovative’, and some of us would probably label ourselves as pretty fucked-up. Crazy is cool, right, because it expresses originality?*For a purveyor of what I’m calling a ‘sub-genre’ of being fucked-up, we turn to Captain Beefheart. Don’t go back that far? OK, how about Mansun’s Six? Deerhoof? I’m not talking about ‘fucked up’ in the context of ‘THAT CHORD PROGRESSION WAS MENTAL BACK THERE’ or ‘OMFG KEANE NEVER USED TO HAVE A GUITARIST’.

That’s not it. Skeletal Lamping isn’t a fucked-up album because of its showy instrumental prowess or choice thereof, it’s not that simple. It’s the deep-seated creative anarchy in Kevin Barnes’ mind that we’re shown in all its kaleidoscopic machinations that makes it fucked up, wherein most of the tracks consist of suites that alternate between crude declaratives to the psychologically baffling.

Barnes’ is a mind wholly engrossed in its own throes of ecstacy, concerned for neither demise nor aggrandisement, but merely human existence: he takes on the personality of his black shemale alter-ego Georgie Fruit for the journey, who most people may remember from Hissing Fauna, are you the Destroyer?’s Labyrinthian Pomp, though his ‘existence’ predates the band’s 2007 effort. He’s the protagonist in this complex, sordid affair, ‘Gangbanging the sad return to the eagle-shaped mirror’ and ‘only poisoning you, not gonna stab you’. In the latter Barnes sounds eerily similar to Family Guy’s ‘Greased Up Deaf Guy’.

So we’ve established that lyrically Skeletal Lamping’s an anomaly even in Of Montreal’s campy, flamboyant back catalogue. Musically it’s just as peculiar: the songs are, as earlier mentioned, more like suites than individual tracks. There’s no shirking the fact that it’s occasionally a difficult listen as well; the opening two tracks breach the 5-minute mark, and it’s disorientating to hear a lengthy instrumental section begin pounding away just a couple of minutes into ‘Nonpareil of Favour’. To say the album is erratic is a bit of a misnomer, since most which stretch to 15 tracks are; Skeletal Lamping feels like it’s thrust you into the middle from the off and ends abruptly with ‘Id Engager’.

It’s still largely made-up of the celebratory, funky indie-dance Of Montreal have been perfecting with each release, Barnes’s balls-in-a-vice high-pitched vocal cavorting as prominent as ever. It’s not as openly confrontational as HFAYTD?, more content to further evoke the imagery of Barne’s lyrics, except for the occasional relapses into bizarre, indulgent jungle rhythms, such as the final few minutes of ‘Plastis Wafers’ (which is later followed by the ape mimicry of ‘Id Engager’). It’s not only in the tribal numbers that the sexual anarchy is evident, though it certainly adds to the effect of tracks like ‘For Our Elegant Castle’ and even moreso on ‘Beware Our Nubile Miscreants’:

“You only like him because he’s sexually appealing
But I read his journal, it was very revealing
He fucked your sister in an elevator junior year
Oh yeah, oh yeah
And let your brother suck him but then beat him
So he could prove he wasn’t queer”

So yes, it does descend into rather basic wordplay, but it’s pretty delicious to hear it being rasped out hypocritically by a character like George Fruit, cascading synths and guitars eventually building up alongside the bongos before dropping into 80s spacey chords in the outro. You could argue that the sexual depravity acts equally as much as an incentive to understand the complexities of the record as it serves to complicate them.

After all, most mainstream music is based on the premise that people like to hear songs about fucking, or alluding to it. But the final two verses of ‘Gallery Piece’ end not on sexual deviances but the need for dependence: ‘I wanna be your only friend’ and ‘I wanna be your “What’s happening?”’. It’s not necessarily all gratuitous sexual fulfilment here.

Occasionally the other complexities and juxtapositions can be hilarious: in ‘Women’s Studies Victims’ Fruit spends time waiting in a queue debating Tax reconstruction and Illicit Pentagrams with value voters who have no idea what he’s talking about, and then in ‘Triphallus, to Punctuate!’ he moves from a mundane dialogue about calling people to an overblown chant of ‘GUESS I SHOULD BE HAPPY FOR YOU, FOR YOUR SUCCESS AND ALL THAT!’. If none of that intrigues you, it’s not the album for you.

Yet it’s almost entirely at odds with the demented message of the piece for me to say that Skeletal Lamping’s most straightforward moments are its best: amongst all the sexual camaraderie and psychedelia comes ‘Touched Something’s Hollow’, a fragile, brief interlude pondering our protagonist’s damaged person that’s refreshingly downbeat. It then filters into the full-colour brassy splendour of ‘An Eluardian Instance’, a retrospective analysis of Barnes’ initial relationship with his last wife that swells on a basic piano line and jangly guitar throughout. It’s a sign that Barnes hasn’t totally lost it, and that’s reassuring.

Skeletal Lamping is fucked-up, and just how much you get out of it will probably depend on just how fucked up you believe yourself to be. But a warning; if you last, stay away from people you don’t feel comfortable endlessly serenading with ‘We can do it softcore if you want, but you should know I take it both ways’. Make sure they don’t see the decals on your wall, either.

*If you’re looking for a perfect little thesis on the hypocrisy of purported individualism, check out Say Anything’s ‘Admit It!!!’

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