Of Montreal

with guests:
Jon Brion

artist web site

Transformations come easily to Kevin Barnes, the Of Montreal frontman: Over the past 11 years, he's seamlessly morphed from low-fi indie rocker to quirky prog-pop star, and now on Skeletal Lamping he's a glam-funk warrior, drenched in the sounds and sexuality of Prince, Freddie Mercury and Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie. A soulful romp through psychedelic melodies and sprawling noise-scapes, Skeletal is also a whimsical, Girl Talk-style pastiche, with 15 tracks that consist of a multitude of song fragments. And Barnes' lyrics are just as seductively schizophrenic: "I want to make you paranoid and say the sweetest things," he sings on "Gallery Piece." And somewhere in the glorious friction between these contradictions, he's in ecstasy.