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of Montreal - Skeletal Lamping

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imagist42:
Okay guys, there is no sense arguing the quality lyrics when the actual music is pretty disappointing anyway.

 :-(

Let me clarify: I loved Hissing Fauna and it was what made me actually start paying attention to Of Montreal instead of passing on them as I usually did prior to its release. I loved that it was a little eccentric and playful while still remaining, at its core, an album full of pop songs (save for the rather proggy "The Past Is a Grotesque Animal," which I love more than any other Of Montreal song but that's another story entirely). I especially loved how well it flowed, how despite being catchy enough to listen to any song at any time, the experience of the album as a whole was incredibly engaging.

This album proves to me that Of Montreal is still best at writing hooks with pop sensibility, because that's what the vast majority of it is. But in abandoning any traditional song structure, it loses the continuous flow of Hissing Fauna that made that album so great. This album is little but a repeated experience that can best be described as "hearing a really interesting melody that you want more of and then wondering why OH GOD WHY it's suddenly gone and replaced with loud, repetitive garbage-noise oh hey there's another hook NO WAIT they killed that one too this part is just kind of boring." I just... I really feel that Kevin's spaz-tastic ADD going out of control is really detrimental to this album, because there are parts of songs like "For Our Elegant Castle" and "An Eluardian Instance" that I would bloody love if they were more carefully developed instead of introduced and thrown away in favor of... well, the less enjoyable parts of "Nonpareil of Favor."

It's not that I just want Of Montreal to keep spewing out pop song after pop song. Well, not exactly that. As I mentioned, I dug "The Past Is a Grotesque Animal." I really would have liked an album based on that concept of developing long epics on interrelated themes. Instead it seemed to go the opposite way, and toss in as many abolustely discordant ideas as possible, one after the other with no sense of tact and transition. That is exactly not what I think they do well. There are many things Of Montreal could probably pull off given the promise shown on Hissing Fauna, but this album ain't one of them. Heck, I would have taken an entire funk album like "St.Exquisite's Confessions" if it cut out that subpar crap in the last 45 seconds of the song!

MobyDickhole:
OK... I really like Skeletal Lamping

But I really miss of Montreal's more minimalistic stuff.
they are starting to sound way serious and deep which is cool

but the line: The row boat came so David stopped arguing with a mime and waved his arms like wheat. But when he tried to speak the Prince of Plum fell through the roof of his mouth and handed David an envelope inside was a letter that read 'sir, you were given this envelope by mistake please disregard it'

from the song 'Penelope' is GENIUS...

I also really wanted to hear stuff more like the stuff from that "Icons Abstract Thee" EP, because that EP was soooo good.

And I haven't seen it mentioned here, but I'm REALLY glad 'Feminine effects' did not get onto the album because I fuckin hated tht song.

skylinetrain:
I really like Skeletal Lamping and Of Montreal and Kevin Barnes. I think they're creative and fun and fucking insane. He said in an interview before Skeletal Lamping came out that it was going to be more disjointed and episodic and I quite like it. It's a sort of musical stream-of-consciousness. I feel like people shouldn't compare albums to other albums, because they're meant to stand alone. It makes sense to follow an album that was largely linear with one that is erratic in organization.

If you have a minute, you should read Kevin Barnes' essay about "selling out." I thought it was quite interesting.

october1983:
Similarly interesting is Tommydski's reaction to it earlier in this thread.

Also, I'm really not sure how I feel about this album yet. I've only listened to it fully once, and since then I've not managed to get through the whole thing in one sitting again. It feels overly long, at just under an hour, especially for such a disjointed album - the somewhat chaotic and often spasmodic arrangement of the songs is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be a little exhausting and I think making it about a third shorter would've made the whole experience a lot more enjoyable. But then, I'm not sure there are many albums that should be longer than about 45 minutes, anyway.

I'm seeing of Montreal in a few weeks, and I'm definitely interested to see how this record translates into a live performance.

Professor Snuggles:
I really love this record. Top 10 of the year for sure (again), and I think it might overshadow Hissing Fauna. It took me a couple listens to be able to deal with it, but now that I'm into it I never want to get out.

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