Of Montreal
Satanic Panic In The Attic

THE REVIEW

The 2000s, a time of revival. Looking back to revive an era. An unlikely, anti-historical, pathetic operation. Also because it's clear that it's a fake, you can feel that it's artificial. There's the vintage effect, today overused, that makes you understand that "the past is a foreign country." However, it's also nice to know that today, with the end of History, there are those who don't care and bring back the music of the past as is. If this recovery is also based on a compositional vein above average and a taste, grace, and class in arrangements like you don't encounter every day, then we can also abandon ourselves with our nice silly smile to the pure pleasure of Of Montreal.

The reference "corporation" is Elephant 6, a label devoted to a revival, sometimes calligraphic, sometimes distorted, of the psychedelic heritage of the sixties. Everyone has jumped into this "nostalgia operation," except the best of the platoon, those Neutral Milk Hotel who abandoned us at the peak, after 2 fabulous "fuzz-folk" records that swept away, like emotional hurricanes, the last millennium. NMH did everything but revival, thus presenting themselves as the heretics of Elephant 6. Other travel companions of "ours," like Apples In Stereo, wrote anthems that were less indie and more pop, plundering the 60's but burying them under layers of vocoder, effects, and forced timbres. It's not that the AIS didn't leave their mark with their cotton candy, because any pop star would give away all their organs to compose "Radiation" or "Play Tough," but the elegance of Of Montreal, that no one else has among the "mannerists" of our era.

And so “Satanic Panic in the Attic,” released in 2004, the sixth effort of the Athens band, is an irresistible rococo mosaic of the music that was listened to 30 or 40 years earlier. The nostalgic intent is evident from the start: the awareness of the operation, with the resulting underlying irony, does not, however, prejudice the pure beauty of harmonious musical forms like a Canova sculpture. There is a hint of Gong, the historic Franco-Canterbury band, in the bold geometry of "Disconnect the dots," an invitation to carefree enjoyment ("It's so beautiful..."), whereas the mischievous motif of "Rapture Rapes the Muses" seems to have emanated from a small radio left burning under the sun on a beach. The same shore where, reckless and effervescent with adolescence, surf the surfers of "Chrissy Kiss the Corpse"...

Learned connoisseurs not only of the acid/psych/garage lexicon of the 60’s, Of Montreal also set in the citationist mosaic the subsequent decade, the one of glam, art, prog: "Lysergic Bliss" opens the curtain with sorcerous arpeggios à la Amon Dull, soon degenerating into a retro nursery rhyme, to surprise with a tail where, one after another, invaluable archeo-musical relics are cataloged, from the operatic voices of Queen to the sleepless organ of Manzarek, to the misty flute of Traffic. The fact that Of Montreal are American does not prevent them from paying homage to the masters of Albion: "Will You Come and Fetch Me" reproduces in its opening the forest of lysergic sounds so dear to Syd Barrett, passing the baton to "My British Tour Diary," a shameless caricature of dandy exploits of Kinks-ian memory, a touch-and-go (with a low-cost time machine) in Swinging London: an afternoon of premeditated euphoria, complete with a homage to Gary Glitter, the (un)forgotten glam icon.

The sultry slide of "Erroneous Escape into Erik Eckles" makes one think for a moment of the Monochrome Set, and the vacation tinges with melancholy ("I'm not upset, just confused, when it's over..."). Joker hilarity, anachronistic joy de vivre, stubborn and irresponsible ignorance of how dark our times are: it is the sentiment that peeks through in "Your Magic Is Working," the masterpiece of the album. It is paired, in a quieter but equally sugary variant, with "Climb the Ladder," a not even too veiled homage to Todd Rundgren's authorial pop. "City Bird," an acoustic whisper on tiptoes, is a story in itself. In the end, the record becomes a bit affected, persisting in baroquisms and affected phrasing, like a team that, ahead 4-0, indulges in "keep-ball."

For this review, thanks to Korrea, who some time ago in chat made me reassess Elephant 6, this group of impudent time travelers, meticulous conservators of an unrepeatable musical heritage, utopian falsetto-voiced singers of the other America, smiling portrait painters of the many faces of pop psychedelia.