of MontrealSkeletal LampingReview

One could accuse of Montreal of being many things - baffling, pretentious, frustrating - but predictable they ain't. While their early oeuvre displayed a knack for psychedelic whimsy, they have latterly embraced abyssal rumination - and this, their ninth album, consolidates that shift into darker territory. In of Montreal's surrealist world, however, desolation is soundtracked by screwball disco-funk. The effect is profoundly disorientating, like being trapped in a Salvador Dali painting with the Mad March Hare as tour guide.

Last year's harrowing, flamboyant opus Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? probed the troubled psyche of Kevin Barnes, and the frontman's existential battlefield remains our backdrop here. Skeletal Lamping recounts the odyssey of sexual experimentation that accompanied Barnes' separation from his wife and child. To freely tell these tales of misadventure he sings as Georgie Fruit, his inner black she-male, and this quirky device ensures the album's sense of fun. After all, when your songs feature such dubious tributes to conquests as "you are the only one with whom I would role play Oedipus Rex" it's important to retain a bit of humour.

The tragi-comic pendulum swings throughout Skeletal Lamping, causing fragments of words and music to clash violently - often within the same song. Nonpareil of Favour, for example, opens with an ecstatic declaration of love before plummeting into grungy despair. Such persistent shape-shifting of pace and sentiment renders it impossible to distinguish between joy and misery. Touched Something's Hollow is no sooner wallowing in its refrain of 'why am I so damaged?' than it is shattered by the trumpet fanfare of An Eluardian INstance. However, this uplifting account of how Barnes met his wife is in turn swiftly undermined by Gallery Piece. Told through conflicting emotions like 'I wanna scratch your cheeks... I wanna dry your tears' it announces the dark reality of lust for all to see.

Skeletal Lamping celebrates the unsettling revelation that pleasure runs amock through the long days and nights of the soul. And, as Id Engager closes the album in technicolour catharsis, you're left reeling at how exhilarating someone else's therapy can be.