by Peter De Vries
Ever since 2007, Kevin Barnes has been conjuring new ways to show listeners how fun it can be to go crazy. If we can take the endless nervous ramblings and obsessive identity crisis that fuelled 2007’s Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? as precedent, then lead singer Barnes has shifted the focus this time to tortured love and feelings of inadequacy on False Priest, Of Montreal’s twelfth album to date.
The subject matter may be angst-ridden, but anyone who has stuck with Of Montreal this far knows that Barnes and company have never been the type to just whine and forget the tunes. *False Priest* contains much of the same bouncy, frantically melodic, chemically-assisted indie rock they’ve been perfecting from the beginning, and it works both as a blessing and a hindrance throughout.
Long-time fans will find themselves on familiar ground with songs like “Coquet Coquette,” a song about Barnes’s “beautiful teenage lust” for a mythical indie queen, but it’s the album’s familiar feel that can make parts of it seem recycled from previous efforts. “Godly Intersex” and “Enemy Gene” are the two worst offenders here, and Barnes’s cloying yelps and jarring falsetto on “I Feel Ya’ Strutter” make it possibly the most polarizing opening track the band has ever created.
Thankfully, False Priest never becomes a complete bore past its mid-album hump. “Sex Karma” impresses not only with its catchy opening hook and charming duet of Barnes and R&B diva Solange Knowles, but also because Barnes manages to sing “You look like a playground to me” without sounding like John Mayer. From there, the album moves seamlessly into the cocaine-fuelled rush of “Girl Named Hello” and joyously bumpy climax of “Famine Affair,” making its second half a blast of pure joy, even though Barnes’s girl “destroys his head and un-calibrates his skull.”
For all of its quirks, False Priest winds up being a fairly clever, if not somewhat inconsistent outing.
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