Of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping

It may really refer to hunting but to us, ‘Skeletal Lamping’ still sounds like some horrid new sex craze. On this ninth studio album pumping asses, softcore, hardcore and pleasure pusses are interwoven with the usual dose of echoing feedback and virtuoso vocals.

Before Of Montreal seemed – quite brilliantly – like a band for cool kids who really had I Heart Pete Waterman tattooed on their chest. Now, with the pop element harshened and the experimental switchovers augmented this is an album for those who want their music fast, brash and ever changing.

‘Nonpareil Of Favour’ may open proceedings misleadingly, with a fair share of the bumping and unexplained whooshing but by the time ‘Wicked Wisdom’ spurts out ‘Motherfucking headliner bitch / you don’t even know it’ with smatterings of hyperbolic rap thrown in for good measure it’s obvious that Of Montreal are real musical grafters. It’s stylish but not as ear bashingly brash as Chromeo, with instrumentation (‘An Eluardian Instance’), squashed into a disco pop blender. It’s a case of Choir vs Everything plus the kitchen sink on ‘Triphallus, To Punctuate!’

While ‘Women’s Studies Victims’ may be a bit of a trudging dud and ‘St Exquisites Confessions’ ‘sick to suck on the dick of this cruel cruel city’ seems a bit too ‘bastardised BoyzIIMen’ for it’s own good, ‘Plastis Wafers’ shows that the band still (thankfully) believe in ‘if you don’t like this one just wait for the next ‘un’ style of listening. Hell, anyone that can squash the lyric ‘ladies I’m screaming out to you/ from the depths of this phallocentric tyranny’ into a 3 minute pop song is allowed a slip up or two.

Finishing off exhausted and undoubtably sweaty in a weird primeval breakdown, Of Montreal have delivered a great listen. You just won’t find us asking for a skeletal lamping anytime soon.