Of Montreal

Of Montreal

Kevin Barnes is a married white man whose alter ego is a black transsexual named Georgie Fruit. Transformations come easily to the Of Montreal frontman: Over the past 11 years, he's seamlessly morphed from low-fi indie rocker to quirky prog-pop star, and now on Skeletal Lamping he's a glam-funk warrior, drenched in the sounds and sexuality of Prince, Freddie Mercury and Ziggy Stardust-era David Bowie. ("We can do it soft-core if you want/But you should know that I go both ways," he trills on "For Our Elegant Caste.") A soulful romp through psychedelic melodies and sprawling noise-scapes, Skeletal is also a whimsical, Girl Talk-style pastiche, with 15 tracks that consist of a multitude of song fragments. The nine-part "Beware Our Nubile Miscreants" opens with peaceful strings before jolting into a tuneless vamp, then snapping into an echo-soaked wail. And Barnes' lyrics are just as seductively schizophrenic: "I want to ... make you paranoid and say the sweetest things," he sings on "Gallery Piece." And somewhere in the glorious friction between these contradictions, he's in ecstasy.