Send "Of Montreal " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 At the end of "Faberge Falls For Shuggie", a song from Of Montreal's excellent 2007 album Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, Kevin Barnes sings a string of phrases that would become the titles of his next three releases: Skeletal Lamping, False Priest, and now, thecontrollersphere. This suggests a thematic connection between these records, or at least some kind of grand plan. If this unorthodox way of announcing future projects is indeed a meaningful thing, it may also be significant that, whereas Skeletal Lamping and False Priest arrived as full-length works complete with their own distinct quirks and visual iconography, thecontrollersphere is a set of leftovers from the False Priest sessions. Though its tone is very different from False Priest, the deck-clearing nature of this EP hints that Barnes may be eager to complete this arc and move on to something else."Black Lion Massacre", the EP's opening track, is the best indication of Barnes' creative restlessness. It's a five-minute noise rock dirge; deliberately unpleasant and violent in its attack. Prior to the release of False Priest, Barnes had mentioned in some interviews that he had wanted to make music that was ugly and visceral; this song is almost certainly the product of this impulse. As much as it is different from the band's established psychedelic funk style, its monologue about a horrific sexual ritual is firmly rooted in the erudite freakiness of Barnes' last few records. "Black Lion Massacre" also foregrounds a darkness and rage that was buried just beneath the surface of the False Priest material. It sounds like an exhausting catharsis. The remainder of thecontrollersphere hews closer to the sound of False Priest. "Flunkt Sass vs. the Root Plume" echoes the melodrama of False Priest's "Casualty of You" and the more despairing tangents on Skeletal Lamping, and in the sequence serves as a mournful coda to the devastation of "Black Lion Massacre". It's effective and moving, but not the finest example of Barnes' work in this mode. "Slave Translator" and "L'age D'or" have less spark-- decent, mildly funky tracks that hit their mark but sound very much like outtakes....full text |
| Consequenceofsound |
| Undoubtedly among the most important psychedelic pop acts of the past two decades, of Montreal have spent the past four years and two albums stumbling past the shadow cast by 2007′s improbably masterful Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?. Admittedly, anything that would have come out on the heels of that perfectly paranoid concept album would’ve been at least a bit of a let down, but the slippery glam-funk of Skeletal Lamping and an ill-advised tryst with R&B stylings on last year’s False Priest were considerably more than just that. While neither album, both of which took their name from lyrics on the sprawling Hissing Fauna…, were admittedly even that bad, their limited musical scope and weak lyrical content made Barnes and of Montreal out to be lost and out of breath for the first time since the early ’00s. On thecontrollersphere EP, Barnes and his band of lovable weirdos finally sound ready to move past that. From the deafening thrash that kicks off “Black Lion Massacre”, of Montreal make it clear that they’re done fucking around. The bizarre noise piece, which was used prior to its release as the band’s walk-on music on last fall’s False Priest tour, consists of little other than a persistent, mechanical backbeat and sudden crashes of dissonance that call to mind no-wave instigators Swans, all behind a cold, robotic voice (a far cry from Barnes’ usual, effeminate falsetto) that relates a chilling account of life in some sort of freaky, post-apocalyptic world. A sample: “Gouged out the eyes of reptiles and mutilated fish, then prayed deeply and watched as their bodies transformed. Rejoiced in the process and there were rainbows everywhere. Everywhere.” Yeah, don’t ask. From there, the psych-pop outfit paint a gallery of oddities. “Flunkt Sass vs the Root Plume” toys at a number of things, Syd Barrett-esque psych-folk chief among them. Even the slick funk-rock of “L’age D’or” — which nods to Prince in more ways than one — and the positively upbeat “Holiday Call” — which would’ve made a great candidate for a single release on their last LP aside from its eight-minute track length and an extended, exotic midsection — play like expanded takes on some of the ideas that flopped on False Priest and Skeletal Lamping. While more or less a collection of bastardized leftovers from the False Priest sessions, longtime fans should rejoice as the band finally rekindles their longtime relationship with unpredictability....full text |
| Slantmagazine |
| It might seem strange for Of Montreal to deem any of their material as too weird, but that seems to be the case with thecontrollersphere, a nifty little EP that compiles songs too spiky to fit on last year's False Priest. The five tracks collected here are a jumble, somewhat hastily thrown together, but also provide a window onto the stylistic borders of the band's sound. This catchall effort arrives partially to promote the new book by lead singer Kevin Barnes's brother, David Barnes, who's designed all of the band's album art to date, including the fabulously strange collage on display here. Titled What's Weird, the book functions as a companion to the EP about as well as the EP does to the album it follows, which is to say it matches in tone and style, if not in method. thecontrollersphere opens defiantly with "Black Lion Massacre," a sustained explosion of pure noise that sprawls out over five minutes. It's slightly out of character for a band that has usually reined in their most discordant elements, but a fitting introduction to this ragtag collection. Things calm down with the relatively conventional "Holiday Call," a reasonably familiar effort that might make for a fitting single if it didn't stretch out over eight long minutes. Basically, the material here flaunts its own incongruity. These songs don't belong on an Of Montreal album not because of substandard quality, but because they're too messy, all capable of derailing the relative normality that existed on False Priest. The band has always pressed these limits, with stream-of-consciousness lyrics that barely fit within their proscribed structures, and here they gleefully burst the dam. "L'age D'ore" is recognizable on the surface, but its conversational lyrics slant far more sexual than usual, ranging into borderline Prince territory, defusing the lewdness with over-the-top falsetto and quick references to how ridiculous it all sounds. "Slave Translator" is punchy and propulsive until a quicksand verse that slows things down to an insanely sluggish crawl, the background music dissolving into a squelching mass. These long verses dominate over the short choruses, willfully crushing the song's momentum, culminating with an ending that's as ragingly discordant as the album's opening. Songs like this gamely identify the kind of absurdity at play here: thecontrollersphere may be an album of toss-offs, but they're proud ones, earning that status by virtue of robust exploration rather than any real deficiency....full text |
Of Montreal lyrics
