The most misunderstood of Montreal album by far, I thought it was an excellent addition to Hissing Fauna. The music was hard to interpret but the concept starts to captivate you in several unstructured listens. Give it time, really.
Last year's most underrated album, and i couldn't say that more sincerely. As off-putting as this nearly hour-long rapocalypse of dreams and colors and noises appears at first, it has solidified itself into cohesive work upon several rlistens. Its almost as if Kevin Barnes is at the helm of some psychedelic dream-machine; championing the vessel rthrough waves of blissful depression. He has, at last, entirely transformed into his alter ego "Georgie Fruit", and the rhalf woman half man subconsciously parades through each song in rapid ADHD fashion. Altogether, the album rcould've been dissected into three separate works, considering the amount of rhythms and rhyme-scapes present. rBut Barnes would rather throw it all into some sort of terrifying, yet ultimately rewarding experience.
Kevin Barnes has been cruel to me. After the one-two punch Satanic Panic in the Attic and Sunlandic Twins turned Of Montreal into one of my favorite bands, the experimental squall of Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? was interesting, to be sure, but turned me off more than a little after the perfect electronica-meets-power-pop of the aforementioned records. Skeletal Lamping is perhaps even more disjointed and uneven than Hissing Fauna, a record that bounces from random idea to opaque lyric to out-of-the-blue musical flourish with the attention span of a ADHD-afflicted schizophrenic six-year-old with a sugar rush. Barnes is no doubt a kind of musical visionary; just not the kind I expected or really even wanted.
