of Montreal

Skeletal Lamping

(Polyvinyl - 10/21/08)

OF MONTREAL AND POLYVINYL RECORDS ANNOUNCE THE SKELETAL LAMPING COLLECTION AT PASTE MAGAZINE.COM

As reported by Paste Magazine.com (see 8/13 –http://www.pastemagazine.com), of Montreal and Polyvinyl Records are pleased to announce the groundbreaking Skeletal Lamping Collection. The collection marks a first in album packaging and design, with seven different packaging formats to choose from when purchasing the forthcoming of Montreal album.

Digital downloading has brought about an unfortunate situation. From the consumer standpoint, with your purchase, you only receive at best a thumbnail sized image of the album. From the retail standpoint, sales are lost to a faceless server in the middle of nowhere.

The release of Skeletal Lamping is a paradigm shift. The goal is to expand the perception of music packaging beyond traditional flat, square artwork and to bring consumers back to record stores to get it. The album exists in seven different packaging formats: CD, LP, T-shirt, tote bag, button set, paper lantern, and wall decal set. Each item in the Skeletal Lamping Collection includes both the digital album and its unique packaging of the album art.

CLICK PHOTO FOR HIGH REZ IMAGE:

Lamping -- also known as spotlighting or shining -- is a hunting method in which powerful floodlights are used to locate nocturnal animals in the middle of the night. The animals are either picked off or captured as they panic and flee for safety. It's a brutal, terrifying practice, but of Montreal have adopted the technique -- albeit in a strictly metaphorical sense! -- on their ninth album, Skeletal Lamping. Over the course of the record's fifteen tracks, Kevin Barnes, the band's singer and songwriter, shines a light on the deepest, darkest corners of his psyche. He uncovers his freakiest fantasies, revisits his past, and explores seemingly contradictory aspects of his personality. The music is both startling in its specificity and inviting in its universality: Taken as a whole, Skeletal Lamping simulates the labyrinthine complexity of the human consciousness.

Skeletal Lamping may be bizarre, complicated, and dense, but it's also extremely catchy and packed with slinky grooves that demand a physical response. Whereas most contemporary pop music is comprised of instrumental and lyrical phrases that feel so familiar that a listener can practically complete the singer's sentences, the songs on the album are refreshingly non-linear. Instantly ingratiating hooks abound, but

Barnes' compositions are constantly mutating and shape-shifting in ways that defy conventional pop song structure and album sequencing.  Nevertheless, the record has its own internal logic, and its many tangents and detours feel entirely intuitive and organic in context.  The movements mimic the shapeless, mystifying mingling of thoughts and emotions in the human mind, so even the most deliberately jarring transitions evoke a sudden shift in attention that is recognizable and commonplace, but rarely emulated in mainstream music.

Though of Montreal have never been strangers to expressing sexuality in their music, Skeletal Lamping finds Barnes and his band fully immersed in the topic. Throughout the record, sexuality is presented as a broad continuum encompassing a wide range of experiences, anxieties, emotions and orientations.  Barnes gives amplification to the multifarious voices in his psyche, and depending on the song, he may be promiscuous or a prude, a romantic or a prostitute, a transsexual or a young straight dude who feels threatened by the sexual experience of his rivals. Barnes openly explores sex and gender roles without insecurity. He attempts to bring all of his fantasies, and terrors, to the surface, so as to better understand the machinery behind them. In Skeletal Lamping, Barnes argues that identity is fluid, malleable, and limited only by one's imagination.

In some ways, the album is the natural result of the band's highly successful tour for their 2007 album Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?.  Though that record was a brutally frank, autobiographical collection of songs about dealing with trauma and depression, the

band's concerts became hedonistic parties that invited the audience to "melt down together" and work out their issues on the dance floor. The group's experimentation on stage with surreal yet overtly sexual costumes and imagery has informed the playful, uninhibited nature of the lyrics, and the uplifting, inclusive tone of the shows has carried

over to the music.