Of Montreal
Throughout this decade, Athens, Georgia’s Of Montreal has
transmogrified from a mere indie-pop band into a kind of
all-encompassing brand. Music has become but one aspect — the
driving one, but still — of a much larger multimedia project, a
development that reached a culmination with last year’s Skeletal
Lamping, the group’s 11th album in as many years.
That’s no sell-out accusation but a simple acknowledgement that, as
Of Montreal’s guiding presence, Kevin Barnes has become not simply an
accomplished musician but a canny businessman: the indie world’s
Barnum. He shows a distinct understanding of the importance of growing
the Of Montreal brand so that it never becomes stale or predictable,
while ensuring that it continues to represent certain reliable core
commodities: superlatively hyperactive pop, outrageously pansexual
lyrics, increasingly extravagant stage shows, and artfully elaborate
packaging.
Of Montreal unleashed Skeletal Lamping in many forms. There
were, of course, CD and LP versions, with intricate die-cut packaging,
making them ownable artworks. Then there was the album as tote bag,
paper lantern, wall decals — everyday objects designed by Barnes’
wife and brother and sold with download codes. Rather than simply
buying intangible computer files, listeners bought tactile products
that became physical manifestations of the music. Of Montreal’s aim was
to transcend the music-listening experience to occupy a slightly more
central role in listeners’ lives. They could read by the light of Of
Montreal, carry stuff in Of Montreal, and even stare at Of Montreal on
their walls.
This aspect of Of Montreal is as crucial as it is playful. It allows
the band to move beyond the declining CD Age. As labels and acts
struggle to figure out how to make money and remain relevant and as
music becomes more digital and less physical, Barnes & Co. are
ensuring their music retains as much physicality as ever, just in new
and more functional forms. While the album as object d’art probably
won’t become the pervasive business model, it remains an ambitious
undertaking by a group determined to shape its own destiny.
Extending beyond album packaging, the Of Montreal brand encompasses
outrageous live shows. The group always has been a traveling carnival,
mounting ever more elaborate shows with each tour. In the past, Barnes
entered the stage via an enormous giraffe vagina, and he notoriously
stripped nude for one set in Las Vegas. The Skeletal Lamping
tour, however, may be their most extravagant to date: The group created
an enormous diorama in which performance artists play out abstract
psychodramas while the band jams and Barnes vamps. With this
stage-within-a-stage, Of Montreal are turning the traditional rock show
inside out, adding layers of meta-postmodernism and guerrilla-theater
spectacle while first and foremost giving audiences an entertaining
experience.
Of course, Of Montreal’s branding endeavor has been and will be
successful only insofar as the music behind the objects and the tours
can sell itself. The group’s uniquely haywire pop typically is at the
very least interesting, its quasi-psychedelic passages jostling with
Princely falsetto come-ons, Zombies hooks, glam stomps, electronic
beats, and kitchen-sink production. Barnes writes and records the
albums himself, with little to no input from the other members of the
group, and he has become more exacting and eccentric over the past few
years. On 2007’s career-making Hissing Fauna, Are You the
Destroyer?, most of which he recorded in Norway during the months
leading up to the birth of his daughter, Barnes mused on marital
problems, prescription drugs, and his own geographic and emotional
isolation — all rare glimpses into his personal life and even
rarer stabs at relatively straightforward song structures.
By contrast, Skeletal Lamping (whose title comes from a
Hissing Fauna song) sounds initially scattershot and
aggressively shapeshifting. It’s modular music, each track constructed
from many different fitted parts. Songs move mercurially, changing
fluidly and abruptly among unrelated passages. The catchiest passages
typically play only once, declining to repeat as a traditional hook,
and the songs flow into each other with no space between to
differentiate them.
A musical patchwork, the album is devoted to outrageous
self-definition: Barnes insistently presents himself as a nympho with
numerous disguises, a lover like Prince, a sexosaurus like R. Kelly, a
freak like Rick James. “We can do it softcore, if you want, but you
should know I take it both ways,” he explains on “For Our Elegant
Caste.” But that may be too modest: Barnes makes clear he takes and
gives it all ways. Musically and sexually, no idea is too far-out to
try.
Some critics and listeners decried Skeletal Lamping as
a retreat from the personal exegesis of its predecessor, an album that
in retrospect seems so intense as to be unsustainable. But reviews were
bound to be mixed. The album seems specifically intended to be slightly
confounding on first listen and exuberantly absorbing on fifth.
Ultimately, it is a party album: If Barnes battled his demons on
Hissing Fauna, Skeletal Lamping assures us he beat them
and wants to celebrate. Each permutation of the album — whether
as lantern, LP, or live show — is a victory lap.
Of Montreal, with Fire Zuave and Sugar & Gold
Minglewood Hall
Sunday, April 26th
Doors open at 7 p.m.; tickets $20
