Album Review : of Montreal - False Priest
- Written by Rebecca Schiller
After hearing the single ‘Coquet Coquette’, an early version of ‘Hydra Fancies’, and a televised performance of ‘Sex Karma’, we knew False Priest would be a great album. And after seeing the album artwork, we knew it would be a colourful and bizarre concoction of genius. Now that we’ve listened to False Priest in its entirety, we can safely say that this Athens, Georgia-based, modern-day glam band’s 10th full-length studio album is worth all of the hype it’s been receiving. With cameos from Janelle Monae and Solange Knowles, a baffling hodgepodge of lyrics and the soulful falsetto of Kevin Barnes, this is one album we just can’t seem to turn off.
Most of False Priest is a rather upbeat collection. And much like the band’s previous releases, this is the kind of album you can listen to hundreds of times, and continue to discover pieces you’ve missed during previous listens. It was only on our ninth or tenth listen that we caught sporadic bits like “Are zombies licking your window?” and “Unicorns eating baby meat”.
But these aren’t even the strangest moments on the album. One of the two tracks featuring Monae’s vocals, ‘Our Riotous Defects’, is certainly the most humorous. Barnes sings about a girl he met at an Al-Anon meeting who was initially intimidating, but he soon discovered she was crazy – like when on their second date she got mad at him and threw his Beta fish out the window. Truly, these are only things of Montreal could sing about and still be taken seriously. This story probably isn’t true, like most of those we find in their music, but Barnes’s ability to cook up insane, fabricated stories is one of the best aspects of the band’s music.
of Montreal have also always impressed us with their ability to seamlessly pack what sounds like several entirely different songs into one track, and we see this again in False Priest. What we also see is a continuation of their last album, Skeletal Lamping (2008), which was heavy on the sexual references. While False Priest isn’t as in-your-face with them (not that this was a bad thing last time), they’re definitely still there. ‘Sex Karma’, featuring Solange, is like a shinier, kinkier version of John Mayer’s ‘Your Body Is A Wonderland’, with lyrics like “’Close your eyes and count to three/I’ll kiss you where I shouldn't be/’Cause you look like a playground to me”.
The most interesting, standout track for us is album closer ‘You Do Mutilate?’, which finishes with distorted vocals giving a rather powerful, thought-provoking speech: “Everybody’s searching for a cause, a reason to blow themselves up/Could be anything/When will certain people realise that afterlife is nothing to live for, nothing to die for, nothing to fight for?...If you think God is more important than your neighbour/You’re capable of terrible evil/If you think some prophet’s words are more important than your brother and your sister, you’re ill and you’re wrong”. Not since ‘The Past Is A Grotesque Animal’ (from Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?, 2007) have we been this touched by an of Montreal song.
If you’re already familiar with the band’s back catalogue, then False Priest will be a delightful continuation of outlandish lyrical musings, and if you’re new to their music, then prepare yourself for 13 unique, mind-blowingly, brilliant tracks.