'I'm so psyched to spend Halloween in Philly," says Kevin Barnes, guitarist and vocalist for Of Montreal. "It's going to be a freaky freakfest."
That would seem like just a boast if it weren't for the fact that Barnes' band, the loveliest and most innovative of Georgia's chamber-psych-pop ensembles, is freaky and frank in a wildly sexual fashion on its new CD,
Skeletal Lamping.
The album is also funky in a flamboyant manner that resembles Prince's
Controversy.
"Ha, I don't know what happened to me," says Barnes whose first cassette tape purchase was
Kool & the Gang: All Time Greatest Hits
, with music by Prince, the Kinks and the Beatles attracting him later. "You could say my roots are in freak funk more than Anglo psych-pop."
While Of Montreal's last album,
Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
, found Barnes toying with sex and sound through a glam-pop alter ego named "Georgie Fruit," the move to making
Skeletal Lamping
more direct, personal and from the heart (or some other body part) was organically derived. "Maybe I got sick of being so depressed and uptight and needed a new position. It just sort of evolved out of the depression and paranoia."
Barnes' liberated sexuality infects his most magical new melodies, like "Nonpareil of Favor," with lyrics as earthy as they are mystically surreal (the latter being Of Montreal's trademark). But his favorite new tune is the CD's most gently innocent; Barnes laughs when he describes "An Eluardian Instance" as the sweetest love song he has written in a long time.
"There's just a nice nostalgia there that's not too corny," Barnes says. You can almost hear him sigh when he admits it. Maybe corny is the new sexy.