Plumbiferous Media

Sec­ond gen­er­a­tion Ele­phant 6 band, of Mon­treal, releases their newest LP, False Priest, on the 14th. The band seems to go in rel­a­tively even cycles, pro­duc­ing good record, then bad record, then good, and so forth, so after the mis­guided Skele­tal Lamp­ing, we were expect­ing a great record. Judged solely on the vinyl pack­ag­ing, False Priest is noth­ing spe­cial: a sim­ple gate­fold, with an art book­let rudely shoved in one of the sleeves. Even the actual press­ing is sub-par. But the afore­men­tioned book­let does con­tain some very strange art­work, and the album eas­ily matches the art, pig head for pig head. False Priest is eas­ily the most diverse album yet, one of the strangest, and though def­i­nitely not the best, one of of Montreal’s strongest albums to date.

Kevin Barnes is back in all of his glory, with every bit of the falsetto-laden wail­ing that implies. Barnes is, as always, excel­lent at giv­ing every one of his tracks the com­bi­na­tion of semi-insane charm and energy that makes of Mon­treal what it is. Barnes smoothly switches between the highly amus­ing spo­ken word of “Our Riotous Defects” and more tra­di­tional of Mon­treal fare, such as the excel­lent “Coquet Coquette.” But what­ever mode Barnes is in at a given moment, he’s at the top of his game through­out False Priest, and it really pushes the album along.

Barnes’ usual lyri­cal mix is about half apiece of psy­che­delic strange­ness and absolute hilar­ity, and on False Priest that unique mix comes together beau­ti­fully. There are very few artists that could get away with using “I Feel Ya Strut­ter” as both a song title and a refrain, and Kevin Barnes is one of them. Whether it’s spo­ken word inter­ludes or the philo­soph­i­cal absur­dity of “You Do Muti­late?”, Barnes’ words give False Priest the resound­ing appeal that makes the album so enjoyable.

False Priest is one of a few albums that truly has every­thing, even the kitchen sink, but more impor­tantly, it’s one of a much smaller group that suc­cess­fully includes the kitchen sink. From the gui­tar heavy, pow­er­ful “Coquet Coquette” to the funk-influenced “Like a Tourist,” False Priest acts as a museum of both old and new sounds for the con­tin­u­ally evolv­ing band. And some­how every­thing fits in per­fectly. Though it was a lack­lus­ter and dis­ap­point­ing sec­ond sin­gle, “Hydra Fan­cies” is a nec­es­sary and excel­lent addi­tion to the album, and “Coquet Coquette” some­how man­ages to sound even bet­ter sur­rounded by the rest of False Priest than it did by itself. Of Mon­treal gets away with mur­der on False Priest. The bla­tantly obtru­sive bass that rocks the ear­lier parts of the album some­how only serves to strengthen the tracks, and tracks that should clash hor­ri­bly sit together with­out so much as a bicker. In fact, of Mon­treal has worked so hard to defend its mur­der that it has no rea­son to cover it up, and as a result, False Priest works, and works very, very well.

False Priest is, on the whole, an excel­lent album. It’s good to see of Mon­treal back on the horse, but to see the band best­ing much of their extremely strong older work with some very, very exper­i­men­tal tracks is even more excep­tional. Com­bin­ing the best parts of of Montreal’s most suc­cess­ful albums with some new energy from Barnes, not to men­tion that added by Janelle Monáe in her appear­ances, False Priest is not only suc­cess­ful but sim­ply fun.

This post is tagged 80-89, Of Montreal