When have the titles of Of Montreal albums ever made sense? Satanic Panic in the Attic? What could Skeletal Lamping possibly denote? Who was Hissing Fauna, besides potentially the Destroyer? As such, anyone who has continued the rewarding but disorienting life of being an Of Montreal fan long ago parted ways with deriving any literal meaning or interpretations from their titles. Which is why it's something of a shock that False Priest carries with it a quite literal and instructive denotation. Much like Hissing Fauna, and far removed from the incoherent insanity of Skeletal Lamping, False Priest is an album that is graciously about something. Kevin Barnes has made this no secret, as in scores of interviews he revealed the subject matter of the group's new undertaking would be an attack on organized religion. It goes beyond that however, this is more than a negative critique. Kevin Barnes and company absolutely assault the concept of organized religion and all of its constrictive dogmas. They bombard it with vitriol and vengeance. They napalm the church.
The best part about this album is the numerous and dynamic approaches they take to such an assault. At times Barnes uses language to agitate and offend the sensibilities of organized religion (lets stop with idealistic euphemisms here, its not organized religion as a whole, its Christianity). In several cases he speaks in terms of evolution, “How can we ever evolve, when our gods our so primitive” in “Enemy Gene” and saying that god has evolved into something awful in “Casualty of you”. At times Barnes directly address the fallacies and hypocrisies of the church. He casts worship in a perverted light when he says “you fetishize the archetype” in “Like a Tourist”. Furthermore, He indulges in heretic thoughts such as pagan rituals- something particularly antagonizing to christianity- like “soak me in animal blood”. All of the imagery is incendiary and volatile, designed to shake loose the foundations of the churches apathetic yet dominant structures.
Elsewhere Barnes is considerably more literal in his criticisms of the church. The final moment or so of the album is an increasingly distorted voice going off on a scathing rant about the ridiculousness, and very real dangers of religion and faith. “Casualty of You” is a clever bit of story telling as he personifies his relationship with god by relating it vicariously to being dumped and ruined by a girl. He laments “You stole something from me/ can't say what/ just know its gone”. He's not speaking to a person, he is referring to the riotous effect (to borrow Barnes' language) religion has had on him. Elsewhere he callously says “Your sister called me the other day”. Is he referring to an actual familial relation, or a sister of the church? It's subtly clever.
Even more damaging to the church is the way Barnes intermingles religion with highly sexualized psychedelic conceits; specificity, the sort of thing the church vigorously contests. Where as Christian preachings have always threatened some non descript punishment for doing anything other treating your body like a temple, in “Sex Karma” he and Solonge Knowles, lavishly treat each other's bodies like a playground. In “Enemy Gene” Barnes challenges the notion of the human condition being characterized by original sin and rather orients it around sex and hedonism. It is our own urges that influence the world we forge, not some theologically instilled notion of good and evil. In “Girl Named Hello” Barnes slurs “If I treated someone else the way I treat myself/ I'd be in jail” promoting a not so subtle reference to his perceived joys of sadomasochism. There's even a song called “You do Mutilate”. He continues to exercise phraseology that carries a specific meaning to the church throughout the album as a sort of affront to them. In the first song “I Feel Your Strutter”, he blissfuly sings how blessed he is to be in love; it's a back handed way of saying all the bliss and fulfilment that the church promised us is something they are incapable of delivering, but we can find it in others- without them. All of these maneuverings are not direct or blunt strikes against the church, rather he he uses sexuality and the physicality of the body as a hedonistic canvas in which to create his protest against the overtly conservative rigidness and intolerance of Christianity. And what better way to malign the church that to use sex; is there anything else that makes devout Christians more uncomfortable. By tangling them together, intersecting them he destroys the barriers the church has built around itself protecting it from such dimensions. “Godly Intersex”, anyone?
As a result this is Of Montreal's most overtly sexually liberating and explorative album. The low fi Sesame Street, Yo Gabba Gabba innocence of the Sunlandic Twins and Satanic Panic in the Attic is long gone. Barnes is no longer traumatized by one singular apocalyptic emotion as in Hissing Fauna. Whatever was going on in Skeletal Lamping... well thats gone too (Don't get me wrong, I quite enjoy Skeletal Lamping, but seriously can anybody tell me what the hell was going on there?). More so than ever Barnes' vocals are seductive and suggestive. Its like the Musical equivalent of a Russ Myers film. This element is lost however during the few occasions where Barnes makes the mistake of regressing into some sort of spoken word monologue, as in “Our Riotous Defects” or "Famine Affair”. He's playful funk falsetto is supplanted by insipid and blase drudgery. I'm thankful it only happens a couple of times but even once is too many. Oddly, my favourite track on the album, “Coquete Coquette” seems (so far) the only track on the album that seems devoid of the thematic punch that defines the rest of the songs. I don't really have an issue with this, as its a damn good song. Mixing a striking guitar hook with a hallucinogenic frenzied fade out, it's an intense trip. It also probably has my favourite line I've heard in a song this year: “I don't wanna catch you with some other guys face under your eyelids”- a wonderful metaphor.
As with all of their albums, False Priest is endowed with a daunting array of alien riffs, oddball synth, feral sounds, nocturnal brassy beats (especially in “Around the way”), and baffling and awkward rhythms and harmonies. Unlike Skeletal Lamping which was nearly torn a sunder by its own strikingly atypical architecture, most of the songs here take the menagerie of audible oddities and firmly coil them together into something much more focused, directed, and coherent. This precision decays somewhat only in the last song, but after making it that far, I'll certainly afford them a little inane experimentation. It's melodically smoother than maybe any of their prior albums; many of the rhythms have a sort of instrumental equivalent to a soft palatalization. Once again they dive heavily into 70s blacksplotation funk, also mixing a great deal of 80s dreary synth pop in the vein of Depeche Mode, albeit at a greatly accelerated tempo. “Hydra fantasies” deviates a little from this but still feels distinctly like Of Montreal with a peculiar and perverted harmony to it. It reminds me why I once described this group as the Mad Hatter of music: mysterious, intriguing, playful, but slightly unsettling and sinister. However there is nothing on the grandiose or epic level of “The Past it a Grotesque Animal” or “Nonpareil of Favor”. Everything here, while bursting with energy is a little more diminutive.
I hope when people listen to False Priest, they will hear more than just slightly obtuse, and scatter brain pop music. It carries with it so much more intent, sincerity, and passion that your average top 40 pop affair, even if at times it seems like nothing more than an abstract perversion of such material. Its content is worth studying in great detail, and in a way that can't really be said for what people may start to mistake as Of Montreal's contemporaries (I have a feeling that people are going to start comparing Kevin Barnes to Lady Gaga. Barnes could eat her alive- have you seen the video for “Coqute Coquette”?). While it is vengeful, spiteful, and even maybe a little narrowly bias, it is done so in a brilliantly nuanced, subtle, and imaginative way. It may be hard to take they're claims seriously when presented in such a hyperbolic manner- but you really should. That's the way it should be anyways, as I can think of few better words than hyperbolic to describe Of Montreal.
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