Of Montreal
Skeletal Lamping
2008, Polyvinyl
By Allana Mayer
Nietzsche once likened life to a contest and declared that if anyone ever won, we’d have to kill him or her so the rest of us could keep playing. Similarly, a friend handed me a CD last week and told me by way of introduction that the band broke up after recording it — according to him, they couldn’t possibly have written better music than this album, ever, so there was no reason for them to stay together. These counter-intuitive sentiments are upsetting, but justified, in a strange way. And so it goes with Of Montreal: every time they release another album part of me rejoices, but a small voice cries “Why must it go on?!”
I suppose a bit of back story would be appropriate here: Once upon a time a love interest professed his Of Montreal 
fanaticism, and it became a point of contention between us. This was back pre-Sunlandic Twins, way before the transvesto-pop, the era of “Happy Little Bumblebee,” and I had never really caught on to the cynical, quirky, self-loathing melancholy their songs epitomized. Then our romance went sour (not entirely unrelated). Then, several months later, The Sunlandic Twins came out and I realized how ridiculously good it was, and had to go through this quasi-religious cycle wherein I questioned my beliefs, saw our relationship encapsulated in the obscure lyrical references, loved it, hated it, made myself sick of it. “Requiem for O.M.M. 2″ took me down and “The Repudiated Immortals” brought me back up again. You know the drill: everybody has that band, and Of Montreal is mine. And with the release of Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer, it was all brought back — same skill, same style, same symbolism, same self-imposed torture. “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal” destroyed and “We Were Born The Mutants Again With Leafling” revived. And now here they are doing it again? Why must it go on?!
All this to say that Skeletal Lamping is phenomenal, as phenomenal as their previous dance-y, synth-y, poetic, dirty, hilarious, heartbreaking releases. And I wish they could just shut up and retire already, because now I’ve got three albums (and a newfound appreciation for their back catalogue, of course) to listen to continuously for the rest of my existence, and I don’t need to be consumed by even more opportunities to pick at myself. I’m wary of sitting down and analyzing any of the songs in detail, because this will become even less of a review and more of a confessional: I’ve already hurdled over that line, as it is.
But seriously, Of Montreal, give it a rest. I concede defeat. You won the game, okay?
OMG. And their show on Tuesday (at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre — what?) was incredible, despite the loss of Gang Gang Dance as an opener. I had a brief encounter with Of Montreal once in Hamilton at the Casbah.. there were a few costumes changes, but this time was like 1,000x the excitement and theatre. The costumes, the sets, the dancers/actors, the gender-bending, the projections, the Greek mythology, the sparkles.. all incredible and super, super-entertaining. Well freaking done, Kevin Barnes and company. (Not to mention how much that night made me yearn for the heyday of Elephant 6.)
see, i missed the good ol’ $12 shows at Dee’s, and am wary of seeing them all theatrical-ized. i lost my fascination with Sufjan Stevens partly because of the gratuitous gimmickry (the other part was that all of his songs sound exactly the same. EXACTLY). i think i take Of Montreal too seriously to have any fun at their shows. ah well – my loss, i’m sure.