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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.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Disconnect the Dots (04:25)
Come disconnect the dots with me poppet! Come disconnect the dots
Come disconnect the dots with me poppet! Come disconnect the dots
It's so beautiful
Our lunacy
It's so beautiful
02 Lysergic Bliss (04:04)
Wearing an olive drab
but feeling somehow inside opalescent
Wonder how I'm managing to smile oh
when I can't even pay my rent
Maybe it's because I've finally found
my little tulip my Norge dear
Funny how in spite of all my woes
life can appear rosy and clear
rosy and clear
And I'm dizzy from her kiss
so vertiginous lost in lysergic bliss
Love the way you wear your curly hair
sanguine and spiraling tied in a bun
Love the way it falls about your face
mercurially gilded by the sun
If we were a pair of jigsaw puzzle pieces
we would connect so perfectly
Creating a still photo of a scene
from the Phantom of Liberty
04 My British Tour Diary (02:19)
On our trip to England I noticed something obscene
People still actually give a shit about the Queen
Though London girls aren't snobs at all
and Brighton's lovely in the Fall
Left alone to drive ourselves on the opposite side
Man it was a miracle that nobody died
Hanging out with Steven Drew, Theo,
Paul and Sorrel too
Eating at Welcome Breaks daily
We danced in Leeds with Brit Pop Haley
Performing with the Apples
and then crashing at the Wrights
Bitching because Steven booked us
on such early flights
Always in a foggy haze
because we hadn't slept for days
Every single one of our London cabbies played
The most truly repellent techno music ever made
But they'll drop you without hesitation if you try changing the station
Up to our necks in crisps and litter
in the van we dubbed the Gary Glitter
08 Erroneous Escape Into Erik Eckles (02:48)
The octopus in your purse
is cursing like an evil sailor
But remember the knife is worse
for the editors of movie trailers
And if you want me to
I'll help it's all the same to me
just tell me if you want me to
If you keep killing God in your eye
people will think you're really callous
But no matter how hard you try
you'll never be as weird as Uncle Alice
I'm not upset just confused and it's so tough
I can't relate to this world I'm not bored enough
Watch out the music will complete the change in you
To sing this song in braille
you need to be haunted by glass freckles
And if your color treatment fails
well you can always talk to Erik Eckles
10 Your Magic Is Working (03:42)
Baby your magic is working
I lose control of myself when ever you are near me
I feel myself changing
From a guy too cynical for love
into a blushing romantic
Oh honey I'd swim across the Atlantic
just to be near to you I'm hopping like a kangaroo
Baby your magic is working
all of my friends think I'm mad
'cause I talk of nothing but you girl
How you've really changed me
for a guy thought too cynical for love
You've proven everyone wrong
anywhere with you girl is where I belong
Everything is beautiful and you are the reason
Lately I've been so happy
just holding you and gazing into your eyes
like in a movie
You are a star…I mean a starlet,
listen the night we met I fell in love with you
Who'd have guessed who'd have guessed
I'm in love I'm in LOVE!!!
How you've really changed me
from a guy thought too cynical for love
Suddenly I feel as light as a butterfly
and wanting to give love another try
Everything is beautiful and you are the reason
Baby your magic is working
my mirror's reflection is you
looking coquet and smirking
now your magic is working
11 Climb the Ladder (03:26)
When I'm caught in a net and I haven't a clue
All I've got to do is climb the ladder to you
Climb the Ladder
When there are ghosts in my coat
and everything is askew
All I've got to do is climb the ladder to you
Climb the ladder to you
All of these faces are crowding around me
with mouths open wide to devour
But they have no impact no I do not cower
knowing I'm safe in your tower
When my pencil tips broken and my brain is too
All I've got to do is climb the ladder to you
Climb the ladder
When I feel like an oar in a sunken canoe
All I've got to do is climb the ladder to you
Climb the ladder to you
All of these faces are crowding around me
like grey paint caked on a flower
But they have no impact no value no power
knowing I'm safe in your tower
13 Spike the Senses (03:11)
Every second of every minute of the day
I let my fancy play
And when the feeling strikes me
I deliquesce in the sky without waving goodbye
While contemplating (ooohhhooohhhooohhh)
a fractured pale cathedral wall
death can't touch me at all
Let its rapacious fingers with venomous stingers try
I'd like to see them try
Try to find a way to spike the senses
till everything goes white (x3)
Try to find a way to spike the senses
I had a vision of vinyl spiders in a cage
now I avoid the stage
'Cause though it was a trifle
I still can't stifle the fear
that they might just reappear
Try to find a way to spike the senses
till everything goes white (x3)
Try to find a way to spike the senses
Climbing climbing climbing never falling
If it was up to me I'd freak the clouds
let them fall and drip to the sea
I think the chemicals have done
some evil thing to me
14 Vegan in Furs (03:53)
I used to think it black while at my country seat
Now I'm peaking in so many ways
the gloom is in retreat
Yes the dark epoch is over I've found my efeblum
Then passed Ernst's mausoleum defended by a rook
Who shot a look so virulent it pierced me like a hook
The palaver of Solipsists exploding in my skull
Yeah and we both despise all of the academic swine
Who made the author of "Discus Ulysses" benign
So what if Wednesday finds us
wearing rabies parachutes
Foaming like the melodies of sea foam fairy flutes
The atmosphere is viscous we're sticking to the brine
When the lanterns fill with finches
so begins the brawl
Their brains are like porcupines
and mine's a paper ball
I know they don't understand they don't get us at all
Their moss mangles polyanthus
and mine's a paper ball
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