Of Montreal, False Priest

[Ed. Note: As of this week, reviews on AudioSuede will no longer include ratings. There are any number of reasons for this. Any questions, send 'em our way - CH]

Of Montreal, False Priest

Reviewed by: Christian Hagen

For years the champions of sad-sack hyper-literate indie-dance youths, of whom there are apparently many, Of Montreal has always been a group of fractured ideas and even more fractured reactions. 2008 saw perhaps the most extravagant example of this presentation in the form of the band’s ninth release, Skeletal Lamping. Chaotic and high-concept, Lamping was, to some, a masterpiece, singer Kevin Barnes’ madcap, honest, self-conciously pretentious art rock shining at its most split-brained and wild. To others it was a spectacular failure, an exploitation of overtly sexual non-inneuendo and musical breaks which shriek and pull and damage the eardrums of the listener ultimately leading to very little emotional payoff.

One thing that is undeniable about Skeletal Lamping, however, was that it featured the clearest funk influences of the band’s career. The guitar lick at the opening of “St. Exquisite’s Confessions” poured soul out of every note, and bouncing basslines and crazed synths rode along on every track and balanced as much afro-futurism as white disco pop. And truly, finding the bass in their sound was the best thing that ever happened to Of Montreal; the potential of the group to make a crowd move seems to have grown exponentially, while at the same time the borderline twee sounds of their early records have found a stronger, more nuanced root.

False Priest could simply have been a concise retread of the Skeletal Lamping explorations, a fine tuning that reached similar results with some slight improvements or deletions. But somehow, the band has managed to find new territories to traverse within their own sonic realms, and have mined into strings, pianos, and guest vocals to greater effect than they ever have before.

Take the darkly brooding opening of “Casualty of You,” with its mournful piano loop and classic, Ringo-esque drum fills waltzing into a clashing orchestral arrangement. The song that follows is almost as bleak as the introduction, with lines like, “You’ve ruined me/You’re a terrorist/I’m a casualty of you.” Truly, Barnes’ lyrics have often held an air of tragedy, or at least perceived tragedy, but rarely has the music so richly matched the darkness in his words. What many lines lack in subtlety, they manage to make up for in their brilliant arrangement within these songs.

The majority of the album features some of the most exciting and fresh songwriting of the band’s career, surprising without being jumpy, without squeezing five different song structures into three minutes of music, as we heard on their most recent releases previous.

Admittedly, from the album’s opening track, “I Feel Ya Strutter,” a listener would be forgiven for thinking False Priest is yet another falsetto-heavy, sugar-high crazy album that fits in neatly and perfectly with everything else that band has produced to date. But by the time the same listener reaches the blistering opening riff of “Coquet Coquette,” the lead single, it should be evident that Barnes and co. are reaching into some very worthwhile new territory.

“Coquet,” in particular, may be the band’s most heavily rock-focused song. Guitar solos, bursting drum fills, heavy chugging chords; there’s an edge to it that has nothing to do with sexual or drug-influenced lyrical ramblings. From there, the album shoots its tendrils in a dozen different directions, and in each it finds a beautifully realized feeling of wonder.

Along the journey, the band is accompanied by two of the most gushed-over future pop stars in music, Janelle Monae and Solange (aka Solange Knowles, sister of Beyonce). Any regular reader of this site should know my infatuation with Monae. The flexibility and beauty of her voice stuns in every genre. Thankfully, the Monae-assisted tracks of False Priest, “Our Riotous Defects” and “Enemy Gene,” are much more clearly inclusive of the young singer than the Of Montreal track on Monae’s The Archandroid (in which it is essentially impossible to hear Monae’s voice whatsoever). She blends herself in softly with Barnes, choosing to match rather than overpower him.

The same cannot be said for Solange, who, on “Sex Karma,” throws in the flourish and punch of a pop starlet, a dynamic that is jarring from the relatively straight tone of most Of Montreal tracks. Yet the effect is not unpleasant. In fact the song actually bursts with energy throughout, and Solange’s verses come across as a sort of musical petit fors, an all-too brief treat that’s alluring and refreshing. You can almost hear her smile through some of the sillier sexual wordplay of the chorus.

It’s always a good thing to say of an album that it’s difficult to select the best song, and False Priest is, without doubt, a good, even great album. Perhaps the song that best encapsulates the sound of the group’s history while embracing the punchier, more exploratory sound of their new direction is “Girl Named Hello.” From its tongue-in-cheek chorus (“Who’s your reggae woman now?/Do you even know?/I did a line with a girl named Hello”) to its warped extended dance outro, the song is, to put it mildly, a pleasure, fun and danceable yet with enough variety to keep a careful, critical listener riveted.

As the later songs of the album wander through 80s retro-pop, piano melodies, and even socio-religious-political rambling, there is rarely, if ever, a moment of boredom. As background noise, it’s distractingly enticing. As a signpost showing the way indie-pop’s future, the arrows point in all directions, but in the end, they all feel like they’re going somewhere we’d like to go. No doubt, Of Montreal will be there before the rest of us are ready to understand.