I made a political phone call. I did. Me. To someone else. When I was awake and everything.
You who know me understand that this action flies in the face of everything I have always stood for. In fact, it has always been my ambition never to pay any attention to politics under any circumstances, never, no matter what. For instance, I don't believe I have ever mentioned a politician by name in these pages, for one very simple reason: mostly, I don't know their names.
In years past, sometimes, I have voted, sometimes not; when I have voted, it has been because my wife -my bride, my sexual love partner, the original, one and only Mrs. Kelp (for whom I harbor unnatural affections) -asked me to, and specified my ideas on the subject, not overburdening me with motivation, but in most cases merely proferring a short written list. I take her suggestions invariably, for She is Wise, not to mention my sexual love partner; plus that means I don't have to listen to any of the actual bozos themselves, which has worked out so well for me over the years, I can't tell you.
Perhaps you may wonder what would cause me to suspend such a practical policy. Let's see, how do I say this tactfully? It was fear that one of the candidates- I won't say which one, in order not to outrage anyone- seemed uniquely unqualified (best not to mention which one she was exactly) -might have a chance of serving. I was apprehensive, concerned, queasy, all at the same time. Kinda jumpy.
I told my darling wife I was thinking of pitching in and making some phone calls for the opposite party (again, probably best not to identify the candidate precisely, lest I be knifed, shot or burned; for the sake of discretion we'll just call him, “That One”), and what did she think of that idea. She commented that perhaps I had lost some of my crayons, and wondered how I, a person with no knowledge whatsoever of politics and current events, planned to answer spontaneous questions on those subjects intelligently. To my credit, I saw where she was coming from, and went back under the couch.
Much to my surprise, the nagging feeling that I should be pitching in somehow would not go away, and a few weeks later, at the urging of the 400th email from MoveOn, I actually made some calls. The first guy who answered was very nice, but I kept giggling, and had to excuse myself. Then, just to keep the laughs coming, I called my aged but still intermittently zesty parents, thinking they'd at least get a hoot out of it, but I only got about two sentences into my pre-written spiel before my mom, not recognizing my voice -and why would she, with those sentences! -said, “Oh, thank you, but we've already voted. Goodbye!” and hung up on me. Only my second political call, and already my own ma had declared me a total stranger!
I didn't really make that many calls, probably just about twenty, and half of those to answering machines (the tip sheet specified not leaving messages, but I ended up leaving a couple, figuring you can't ignore the answering machine vote), but they were all over, Florida, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Montana, Ohio -they'd give you the numbers and a little script if you wanted, which got tossed pretty quickly. “Hi, this is Thurston from Massachusetts, quite possibly the least politically informed person in the entire commonwealth, saying, vote for That One! I endorse him! Do what I say!” -this was just one of my angles.
I had some nice conversations. Actually, my mission was to get other supporters of That One who lived in swing states (swing states! -what a concept!) to actually drive somewhere to spend a few hours making phone calls to other voters in their regions. So the object of my phone call was to talk people into making more phone calls. Definitely talked to some nice folk, preaching to the choir, but jesus! -I was voluntarily making unsolicited political phone calls! What had become of me?
Luckily, after about twenty calls, I finally found the nicest guy in Florida who seemed to have been considering the idea anyway, and he said sure, he'd do it, and I was done. I had actually made a recruitment! At which point I gave up completely, probably never to return to activism. And even though my guy said in his acceptance speech that there was much hard work ahead, and that we'd all have to work together, I had already determined that it was unlikely I'd be all over that one, so anxious was I to return to my privileged life of social indolence and decay.
But hey, it sure was fun when he won, huh? Man, I'm telling you, that was a night.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Kelp on the latest Dylan "boot"
If there's one lesson music collectors have been relentlessly taught in the last couple of decades of having record companies sell us re-packaged material over and over in slightly expanded editions, it's that there's a reason most outtakes were outtakes. I've always wanted to believe otherwise, partly because some of the artists represented are no longer still at it, but even more because I just don't want to believe that major corporations are right about anything; but it's the same thing as deleted scenes from favorite movies -even when they're deleted from really good movies, too often the viewer ends up agreeing for one reason or another with the original decision.
In pop music, even the greats didn't leave behind nearly as much as you'd wish they had. The Beatles and the Stones, for instance, had their catalogs exploited so completely when all that stuff was new that there just wasn't much left over, to the extent that nowadays people end up listening to alternate mixes with the most minor changes imaginable. Turns out we didn't really need vaults for most of this stuff after all!
As in most other regards, however, Bob Dylan is a major exception to this depressing rule -not really that surprising when you consider how favorably some of his recent albums (“Love and Theft” and “Time Out Of Mind” both come to mind) compare to his heyday. He should be completely irrelevant by now, but instead, the latest volume of his cast-offs, “Tell Tale Signs, Rare and Unreleased 1989 – 2006”, which is also volume 8 (!!!) of his bootleg series, is amazingly powerful and in fact is in many ways preferable to his last CD of original material, 2006's “Modern Times”, which wasn't half bad itself.
I really can't tell you what I like so damn much about Bob. After all, he's an incredibly mannered singer, frequently pretentious as all get out, a noted poseur, rootsy to the point sometimes of not seeming to care all that much about melodies at all, and he has always seemed to have a flagrant disregard for the process of making records, using very little of all the studio chicanery available to him and usually seeming pretty happy to get in and out as fast as possible.
Of course, when everybody else was getting real slick there in the eighties and nineties, his steadfast first take approach grew to have a certain charm, just as Neil Young's did when he and Bob seemed to be the last guys on earth who refused to buy guitar tuners. But I've never been a big guy for combing through lyrics that sound like literature, plus Bob's basically still kind of a folkie who frequently writes songs that are way longer than my attention span. What the hell -why would I care about this?
Well, just because Bob is still one righteous stud, is all I can figure.
First, let's be practical: there's some math involved here: the “normal” version of “Tell Tale Signs”, has two CDs and a fucking booklet, all for only $15.99 at Amazon, and the booklet has what they call your extensive (and actually exceptionally good) liner notes by Larry “Ratso” Sloman. Hell, it's a pretty good deal for 27 mostly high quality Bob tunes and a fucking booklet so lovely yet so chunky that it could fairly be called, a “book.”
So far so good, but check this out: there's another, different version for rich people! It looks pretty similar, but it has all the same stuff plus another (as usual) exceptional CD (twelve tracks and easily as good as either of the others), plus a vinyl single (two largely redundant selections), plus an additional book(let) or book or whatever, now don't get me going on that again, OK, but I'd pretty much say “book”, that has a large selection of his single sleeve cover art over the years -no doubt something you don't need that badly, unless you're an un-repentant geek or hopelessly wealthy, in which case, line up, Rodney, that'll be $115.99. Does that seem crazy to anyone else? Like, possibly a hundred dollars is a lot to pay for a CD, a single, and a book(let) or even a fucking book. So I don't know what the hell you wanna do about that, hey don't shoot the messenger, I'm just trying to help. His batting average doesn't change much over the course of the three CDs -christ, he's old as a hill but still batting about .600 and hitting one out of the park every 3 or 4 at-bats, a great power hitter and definitely still hitting to all fields -an amazing value in any league.
The two CDs a normal person would buy contain: a great, loping “All Shook Up” Elvis version of “Dignity”, which is a song I could swear I'd heard from him elsewhere, but couldn't find during my extensive research; an incredibly mangy, rabid vocal on a live take of a song from “Love and Theft” (one of my real favorites) called “Lonesome Day Blues” that is basically a seminar in “bad” singing (only in the sense that it always sounds nowadays like Bob is on the verge of losing whatever meager pipes he had, though of course they're wonderful pipes to me; but still, when he covered “Froggy Went A'Courtin'” or whatever the hell that was, back when he did those one-man trad/folk albums in the nineties, jesus, that was rough, but Bob has always demanded a long rope, and who better to endow with one? I only meant to say omigod what an amazing singer, how can he do all that, all those different voices over the years, what is he a fucking ventriloquist or what?
How does he make himself so compelling? What makes this magic work? Twenty thousand Dylan imitators down the road I should know that I'll never figure that out, and neither will you. It's like, agnosticism, or something.
Where was I? Oh yeah: a less-revolutionary-than-usual version of “Everything Is Broken” (from “Oh, Mercy”, which I don't remember paying much attention to), but this is a nice little rocker; a spooky little acoustic bass and organ number called “Dreamin' Of You” (as is frequently the case, I don't really know what he's singing about here -just haven't gotten around to it yet -but he sure sounds good doing it)...
The tragic third big money CD that no one could possibly afford contains a ridiculously groovy thing called “Marchin' To the City” (most of this stuff is from “Oh Mercy” and “Time out Of Mind”, both beautifully produced by Damiel Lanois -I knew the latter was great, and I'm figuring I better check out “Oh Mercy” again, too); the better of the two versions in the collection of a tune called “Born In Time” that's just a nice pop tune with some slightly Chinese melody lines... and generally lots more whole new songs he's never released before; but try to forget about that one, you really probably shouldn't be spending that much money on pop music at your age.
The regular, poor people's version also has a long, stately, gorgeous tune called “Cross the Green Mountain”, apparently from the sountrack to “Gods and Generals” (there's a few songs from soundtracks here, but this one is particularly stunning); the better of the two nice mariachi versions of the leisurely, traditional “Red River Shore”; and each CD has one of three -count 'em, 3 – wonderful versions of a “Love and Theft” tune called “Mississippi” that are 180 degrees away from the relatively modern-sounding version they released originally (which still worked -it's just a great song – but I like all the alternates better); as Ratso says in the notes, “I could listen to a whole album of various takes of it.” Usually, that's pretty boring in practice, but, like I said, there's exceptions to rules...
It's not like this is all great, just most of it. There's some solo-ish, folky thing I don't care for much - the live take of “The Girl On the Greenbriar Shore” is pretty bad, as are both takes of one called “Ring Them Bells”; other than that, though, it's really all at least pretty listenable -which is a little strange, too. You can put on whole sides of Bob's last few records as background music nowadays, which I never would've figured would ever be the case; but somehow, Bob's kooky-froggy singing is, yes, almost re-assuring at this point, despite how often he's warning us of the apocalypse. It really has been fun having a little Bob party lately...
See, now in just thinking about these songs I remembered that I hadn't paid enough attention to the song he sings with Ralph Stanley, “The Lonesome River”, which I loved, a true battle of car-horn singers; and then remembered liking the one before it, a little ballad called “Miss the Mississippi” that features a great, silly/pretty little harmonica interlude where he bulldozes along through these changes that his harp doesn't really have enough notes for, (or does it?) -jesus I'm really strarting to like this one, too. Looks like I got kind of a Bob fad going here, which is pretty damn fun, for a change.
Bob Dylan, “Tell Tale Signs, Rare and Unreleased 1989 – 2006” - ***and ½ – crazy ol' Bob, in his latest, most comfy incarnation a la “Love and Theft”, “Time Out Of Mind” and “Oh Mercy”, still provides more high quality music than normal people should expect or afford.
In pop music, even the greats didn't leave behind nearly as much as you'd wish they had. The Beatles and the Stones, for instance, had their catalogs exploited so completely when all that stuff was new that there just wasn't much left over, to the extent that nowadays people end up listening to alternate mixes with the most minor changes imaginable. Turns out we didn't really need vaults for most of this stuff after all!
As in most other regards, however, Bob Dylan is a major exception to this depressing rule -not really that surprising when you consider how favorably some of his recent albums (“Love and Theft” and “Time Out Of Mind” both come to mind) compare to his heyday. He should be completely irrelevant by now, but instead, the latest volume of his cast-offs, “Tell Tale Signs, Rare and Unreleased 1989 – 2006”, which is also volume 8 (!!!) of his bootleg series, is amazingly powerful and in fact is in many ways preferable to his last CD of original material, 2006's “Modern Times”, which wasn't half bad itself.
I really can't tell you what I like so damn much about Bob. After all, he's an incredibly mannered singer, frequently pretentious as all get out, a noted poseur, rootsy to the point sometimes of not seeming to care all that much about melodies at all, and he has always seemed to have a flagrant disregard for the process of making records, using very little of all the studio chicanery available to him and usually seeming pretty happy to get in and out as fast as possible.
Of course, when everybody else was getting real slick there in the eighties and nineties, his steadfast first take approach grew to have a certain charm, just as Neil Young's did when he and Bob seemed to be the last guys on earth who refused to buy guitar tuners. But I've never been a big guy for combing through lyrics that sound like literature, plus Bob's basically still kind of a folkie who frequently writes songs that are way longer than my attention span. What the hell -why would I care about this?
Well, just because Bob is still one righteous stud, is all I can figure.
First, let's be practical: there's some math involved here: the “normal” version of “Tell Tale Signs”, has two CDs and a fucking booklet, all for only $15.99 at Amazon, and the booklet has what they call your extensive (and actually exceptionally good) liner notes by Larry “Ratso” Sloman. Hell, it's a pretty good deal for 27 mostly high quality Bob tunes and a fucking booklet so lovely yet so chunky that it could fairly be called, a “book.”
So far so good, but check this out: there's another, different version for rich people! It looks pretty similar, but it has all the same stuff plus another (as usual) exceptional CD (twelve tracks and easily as good as either of the others), plus a vinyl single (two largely redundant selections), plus an additional book(let) or book or whatever, now don't get me going on that again, OK, but I'd pretty much say “book”, that has a large selection of his single sleeve cover art over the years -no doubt something you don't need that badly, unless you're an un-repentant geek or hopelessly wealthy, in which case, line up, Rodney, that'll be $115.99. Does that seem crazy to anyone else? Like, possibly a hundred dollars is a lot to pay for a CD, a single, and a book(let) or even a fucking book. So I don't know what the hell you wanna do about that, hey don't shoot the messenger, I'm just trying to help. His batting average doesn't change much over the course of the three CDs -christ, he's old as a hill but still batting about .600 and hitting one out of the park every 3 or 4 at-bats, a great power hitter and definitely still hitting to all fields -an amazing value in any league.
The two CDs a normal person would buy contain: a great, loping “All Shook Up” Elvis version of “Dignity”, which is a song I could swear I'd heard from him elsewhere, but couldn't find during my extensive research; an incredibly mangy, rabid vocal on a live take of a song from “Love and Theft” (one of my real favorites) called “Lonesome Day Blues” that is basically a seminar in “bad” singing (only in the sense that it always sounds nowadays like Bob is on the verge of losing whatever meager pipes he had, though of course they're wonderful pipes to me; but still, when he covered “Froggy Went A'Courtin'” or whatever the hell that was, back when he did those one-man trad/folk albums in the nineties, jesus, that was rough, but Bob has always demanded a long rope, and who better to endow with one? I only meant to say omigod what an amazing singer, how can he do all that, all those different voices over the years, what is he a fucking ventriloquist or what?
How does he make himself so compelling? What makes this magic work? Twenty thousand Dylan imitators down the road I should know that I'll never figure that out, and neither will you. It's like, agnosticism, or something.
Where was I? Oh yeah: a less-revolutionary-than-usual version of “Everything Is Broken” (from “Oh, Mercy”, which I don't remember paying much attention to), but this is a nice little rocker; a spooky little acoustic bass and organ number called “Dreamin' Of You” (as is frequently the case, I don't really know what he's singing about here -just haven't gotten around to it yet -but he sure sounds good doing it)...
The tragic third big money CD that no one could possibly afford contains a ridiculously groovy thing called “Marchin' To the City” (most of this stuff is from “Oh Mercy” and “Time out Of Mind”, both beautifully produced by Damiel Lanois -I knew the latter was great, and I'm figuring I better check out “Oh Mercy” again, too); the better of the two versions in the collection of a tune called “Born In Time” that's just a nice pop tune with some slightly Chinese melody lines... and generally lots more whole new songs he's never released before; but try to forget about that one, you really probably shouldn't be spending that much money on pop music at your age.
The regular, poor people's version also has a long, stately, gorgeous tune called “Cross the Green Mountain”, apparently from the sountrack to “Gods and Generals” (there's a few songs from soundtracks here, but this one is particularly stunning); the better of the two nice mariachi versions of the leisurely, traditional “Red River Shore”; and each CD has one of three -count 'em, 3 – wonderful versions of a “Love and Theft” tune called “Mississippi” that are 180 degrees away from the relatively modern-sounding version they released originally (which still worked -it's just a great song – but I like all the alternates better); as Ratso says in the notes, “I could listen to a whole album of various takes of it.” Usually, that's pretty boring in practice, but, like I said, there's exceptions to rules...
It's not like this is all great, just most of it. There's some solo-ish, folky thing I don't care for much - the live take of “The Girl On the Greenbriar Shore” is pretty bad, as are both takes of one called “Ring Them Bells”; other than that, though, it's really all at least pretty listenable -which is a little strange, too. You can put on whole sides of Bob's last few records as background music nowadays, which I never would've figured would ever be the case; but somehow, Bob's kooky-froggy singing is, yes, almost re-assuring at this point, despite how often he's warning us of the apocalypse. It really has been fun having a little Bob party lately...
See, now in just thinking about these songs I remembered that I hadn't paid enough attention to the song he sings with Ralph Stanley, “The Lonesome River”, which I loved, a true battle of car-horn singers; and then remembered liking the one before it, a little ballad called “Miss the Mississippi” that features a great, silly/pretty little harmonica interlude where he bulldozes along through these changes that his harp doesn't really have enough notes for, (or does it?) -jesus I'm really strarting to like this one, too. Looks like I got kind of a Bob fad going here, which is pretty damn fun, for a change.
Bob Dylan, “Tell Tale Signs, Rare and Unreleased 1989 – 2006” - ***and ½ – crazy ol' Bob, in his latest, most comfy incarnation a la “Love and Theft”, “Time Out Of Mind” and “Oh Mercy”, still provides more high quality music than normal people should expect or afford.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Of Montreal's "Id Engager"
OF MONTREAL- “Skeletal Lamping” -
Over the last decade or so, there has been no new band I've respected or been dazzled by more thoroughly and consistently than Of Montreal (who actually hail from Athens, GA., and are the brainchild of singer/songwriter Kevin Barnes.) I've been proselytizing for this bunch for years, and been rewarded with many albums that I consider masterpieces, not to mention surprises. “The Bedside Drama A Petite Tragedy”, “The Gay Parade”, and “Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies” all come to mind quickly, and there's lots of other highlights scattered through the surprisingly large catalog they've built up over the years; I've also seen them a few times, and that's always been a blast, too.
Their last couple of albums have sent interest in the band sky-rocketing, which is delightful, especially if you've gotten used to seeing creativity of this magnitude routinely ignored; but these albums have also gotten more and more techno-oriented and less human sounding, partly due to the presence of less humans: in the studio, the band, always largely a one man show anyway, seems to use the other band members contributions less and less (though they're all credited on the new CD, they're getting harder and harder to find) -and therein lies the rub. Their latest, “Skeletal Lamping”, continues the trend, and, while it's an impressive piece of work with more than its quota of interesting ideas, the band's prior achievements make it look to me like another step in a less rewarding direction.
Track one, “Nonpareil Of Favor”, makes nice at first with a bit of hammered dulcimer, but it only takes a few seconds before the techno bass drum and Kevin as both David Bowie and Prince sets the tone for what's to come, followed by about a half minute of more normal-sounding Kevin, followed by his announcement that he is “cracking his sweet love”, followed by a particularly relentless crashing and pulsing section (hello, Lightning Bolt!) that lasts for almost 4 minutes.
The next one, “Wicked Wisdom”, starts with the assertion that “I'm a motherfucking headline oh bitch you don't need to know it”; shortly after, he adds, “I'm just a black she-male”, which hadn't been my assumption. Here, he's starting to make a mistake that millions before him have made by counting on the fact that the listener will be fascinated, or at least curious, about his sexuality, when, at least in my case, nothing could be further from the truth. It is also not altogether uncommon for these sort of revelations to be backed up with all manner of technoid white funkisms, and I just wanna say that doesn't help either, as, up to now, there have been few eartlings less funky than Kevin Barnes (again, not a dig -he's always had way better things to do!) But then, after a minute or so, when you're just about ready to throw in the towel, damned if he doesn't come up with a nice funky little chorus, followed by an even nicer little section along similar lines -a couple of quality minutes! -followed by some auto-harping and mildly Lennon-esque ranting.
Our next stop illustrates my biggest problem with this phase that Barnes has been going through these past few albums, which is that they sound like they were done by one man in a small and airless room. It sounds like most of the instrumentation is keyboard generated, so hardly anything sounds like real instruments; and it's all extremely competent, unlike the Of Montreal I once treasured so, which was fallible, a little clumsy, and still seemed to feature other, less-talented musicians -yes, I'm pining for Dottie. “For Our Elegant Caste” might've made a fairly average (and satisfying) vintage Of Montreal song, but the time is always perfect, there's no false moves, and no air left in the music, and it suffers. There's still plenty of interesting ideas here, if you're intrepid enough to go in for them, but the presentation as is is pretty claustrophobic.
Then you get “Touched Something's Hollow”, a mopey, introverted little minute and a half voice and piano thing that again evokes “Mind Games”-era John Lennon, which proceeds suddenly into “An Eluardian Instance”, which ain't so bad, but it's still a bit glam-y, and ends with the singer requesting “Don't you pimp out my heart” -like, right, that's just what I was thinking about doing. No one likes obsessive compulsives more than I do, but there's a chance this guy needs a hobby.
Then it's back to techno/funk/dance land in “Gallery Piece”, though with some of the album's most compelling lyrics, all in the service of love's most contradictory impulses: “I wanna show you off, I wanna tell you lies, I wanna write you books” -kinda fun, but does it have to sound like a Chic album? Also seems to be one of those songs in search of a chorus -right now, it's all verse.
And again, a lot of this sounds pretty personal, and in Of Montreal's case I'd trade personal for hallucinatory anytime. Lyrically, there's not much in the way of characters and whimsy -it's mostly Kevin being uncomfortable. I certainly don't begrudge him needing to write about something different, because of course he has to change, and no one needs to be counted on to be fun all the time, but I'll be glad when this phase runs its course. Unfortunately for me, the band has attained its greatest success during this period, so while I'm truly and tremendously gratified to see them finally having some long overdue recognition, I know they can't go back, and only hope boredom will eventually trump commerce and we'll move on to phase 3 asap.
Meanwhile, “St. Exquisite's Confessions” is his most egregious Prince rip yet; “Triphallus, To Punctuate!” is again sorta fun, but too relentlessly techno and perfect to be entirely endearing; and then you've got one that starts up as a full-fledged 70's Stones-rip, about “turning tricks on the hood of Jasmine's car”, making me yearn once again for the days before Kevin seemed to be need street cred. Still, even during this little two-and-a-half minute sliver, there's a ton of cool ideas, but I don't know if I want to dance long enough to appreciate them. In fact, I'm pretty sure I don't want to dance at all, and that if I did it would mainly be to something else. And then the next song thinks it's really sexy, too,
and, uh, well, er...
This sounds harsh, and I don't mean it to, but the Flight of the Conchords take on the whole Prince/Bowie thing is more soulful, less pretentious, and funnier. And first -like, a year ago! Too many bands are still doing this shit nowadays -cut it out!
And so it goes, more or less, until the last cut, “Id Engager”, which was also the track the band let out ahead of time as a sneak preview, and is by far the most successful model of the current blueprint. It's just as techno/disco-y as the rest, but its one of the few where it sounds like fun is being had; you still get the Prince thing, but it doesn't take over so completely -the Of Montreal side actually wins on this one! Plus, it doesn't sound so damn autobiographical, and there's gratuitous ninja references popped in at the end just for laughs. So we leave fortified by the knowledge that the new formula can work, yet looking forward to getting out of this phase at some point in the future... please?
OF MONTREAL- “Skeletal Lamping” *** A relatively irritating manifestation of an incredibly wonderful phenomenon -I'd say download “Id Engager” first, then “Wicked Wisdom” and “Triphallus, To Punctuate!” before heading back to their earlier masterworks. If you're new to the band, this isn't where I'd start.
Over the last decade or so, there has been no new band I've respected or been dazzled by more thoroughly and consistently than Of Montreal (who actually hail from Athens, GA., and are the brainchild of singer/songwriter Kevin Barnes.) I've been proselytizing for this bunch for years, and been rewarded with many albums that I consider masterpieces, not to mention surprises. “The Bedside Drama A Petite Tragedy”, “The Gay Parade”, and “Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies” all come to mind quickly, and there's lots of other highlights scattered through the surprisingly large catalog they've built up over the years; I've also seen them a few times, and that's always been a blast, too.
Their last couple of albums have sent interest in the band sky-rocketing, which is delightful, especially if you've gotten used to seeing creativity of this magnitude routinely ignored; but these albums have also gotten more and more techno-oriented and less human sounding, partly due to the presence of less humans: in the studio, the band, always largely a one man show anyway, seems to use the other band members contributions less and less (though they're all credited on the new CD, they're getting harder and harder to find) -and therein lies the rub. Their latest, “Skeletal Lamping”, continues the trend, and, while it's an impressive piece of work with more than its quota of interesting ideas, the band's prior achievements make it look to me like another step in a less rewarding direction.
Track one, “Nonpareil Of Favor”, makes nice at first with a bit of hammered dulcimer, but it only takes a few seconds before the techno bass drum and Kevin as both David Bowie and Prince sets the tone for what's to come, followed by about a half minute of more normal-sounding Kevin, followed by his announcement that he is “cracking his sweet love”, followed by a particularly relentless crashing and pulsing section (hello, Lightning Bolt!) that lasts for almost 4 minutes.
The next one, “Wicked Wisdom”, starts with the assertion that “I'm a motherfucking headline oh bitch you don't need to know it”; shortly after, he adds, “I'm just a black she-male”, which hadn't been my assumption. Here, he's starting to make a mistake that millions before him have made by counting on the fact that the listener will be fascinated, or at least curious, about his sexuality, when, at least in my case, nothing could be further from the truth. It is also not altogether uncommon for these sort of revelations to be backed up with all manner of technoid white funkisms, and I just wanna say that doesn't help either, as, up to now, there have been few eartlings less funky than Kevin Barnes (again, not a dig -he's always had way better things to do!) But then, after a minute or so, when you're just about ready to throw in the towel, damned if he doesn't come up with a nice funky little chorus, followed by an even nicer little section along similar lines -a couple of quality minutes! -followed by some auto-harping and mildly Lennon-esque ranting.
Our next stop illustrates my biggest problem with this phase that Barnes has been going through these past few albums, which is that they sound like they were done by one man in a small and airless room. It sounds like most of the instrumentation is keyboard generated, so hardly anything sounds like real instruments; and it's all extremely competent, unlike the Of Montreal I once treasured so, which was fallible, a little clumsy, and still seemed to feature other, less-talented musicians -yes, I'm pining for Dottie. “For Our Elegant Caste” might've made a fairly average (and satisfying) vintage Of Montreal song, but the time is always perfect, there's no false moves, and no air left in the music, and it suffers. There's still plenty of interesting ideas here, if you're intrepid enough to go in for them, but the presentation as is is pretty claustrophobic.
Then you get “Touched Something's Hollow”, a mopey, introverted little minute and a half voice and piano thing that again evokes “Mind Games”-era John Lennon, which proceeds suddenly into “An Eluardian Instance”, which ain't so bad, but it's still a bit glam-y, and ends with the singer requesting “Don't you pimp out my heart” -like, right, that's just what I was thinking about doing. No one likes obsessive compulsives more than I do, but there's a chance this guy needs a hobby.
Then it's back to techno/funk/dance land in “Gallery Piece”, though with some of the album's most compelling lyrics, all in the service of love's most contradictory impulses: “I wanna show you off, I wanna tell you lies, I wanna write you books” -kinda fun, but does it have to sound like a Chic album? Also seems to be one of those songs in search of a chorus -right now, it's all verse.
And again, a lot of this sounds pretty personal, and in Of Montreal's case I'd trade personal for hallucinatory anytime. Lyrically, there's not much in the way of characters and whimsy -it's mostly Kevin being uncomfortable. I certainly don't begrudge him needing to write about something different, because of course he has to change, and no one needs to be counted on to be fun all the time, but I'll be glad when this phase runs its course. Unfortunately for me, the band has attained its greatest success during this period, so while I'm truly and tremendously gratified to see them finally having some long overdue recognition, I know they can't go back, and only hope boredom will eventually trump commerce and we'll move on to phase 3 asap.
Meanwhile, “St. Exquisite's Confessions” is his most egregious Prince rip yet; “Triphallus, To Punctuate!” is again sorta fun, but too relentlessly techno and perfect to be entirely endearing; and then you've got one that starts up as a full-fledged 70's Stones-rip, about “turning tricks on the hood of Jasmine's car”, making me yearn once again for the days before Kevin seemed to be need street cred. Still, even during this little two-and-a-half minute sliver, there's a ton of cool ideas, but I don't know if I want to dance long enough to appreciate them. In fact, I'm pretty sure I don't want to dance at all, and that if I did it would mainly be to something else. And then the next song thinks it's really sexy, too,
and, uh, well, er...
This sounds harsh, and I don't mean it to, but the Flight of the Conchords take on the whole Prince/Bowie thing is more soulful, less pretentious, and funnier. And first -like, a year ago! Too many bands are still doing this shit nowadays -cut it out!
And so it goes, more or less, until the last cut, “Id Engager”, which was also the track the band let out ahead of time as a sneak preview, and is by far the most successful model of the current blueprint. It's just as techno/disco-y as the rest, but its one of the few where it sounds like fun is being had; you still get the Prince thing, but it doesn't take over so completely -the Of Montreal side actually wins on this one! Plus, it doesn't sound so damn autobiographical, and there's gratuitous ninja references popped in at the end just for laughs. So we leave fortified by the knowledge that the new formula can work, yet looking forward to getting out of this phase at some point in the future... please?
OF MONTREAL- “Skeletal Lamping” *** A relatively irritating manifestation of an incredibly wonderful phenomenon -I'd say download “Id Engager” first, then “Wicked Wisdom” and “Triphallus, To Punctuate!” before heading back to their earlier masterworks. If you're new to the band, this isn't where I'd start.
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