Of Montreal Skeletal Lamping. Nonpareil of Favor. Some sort of baroque opening, a soft voice, less aggression already. Some have discarded new model Of Montreal while desperately clinging to their copies of Cutie Pie and Tim, I Wish You Were Born a Girl and it's true he's turned sex obsessed deviant here but besides that it is business as usual. This is a character, surely, or he's having loads of the sex, the same as the myriad others he has created on previous releases. It's brilliant. There isn't a disappointment to be found here. Ssshhh...secret somehow I've learned to like the Pas/Cal album. But I will still make fun of them. The mirror has two faces. Lovely bit of exploding dissonance here, guitars, does he still pay guitars? Drum machines, feedback, nice. So far as I can tell there are not any 12 minute confessionals on this record. It's groovy. If you liked the first single then it is pretty representative. I don't listen to the last album as much as I should. I was in the downtown are the last time I listened, back when I only worked Saturdays and not Sundays too, but really I go into work hoping to see someone's car in the parking lot now, and its frenetic pace is perfect for the urban excursion, everyone seems in slow motion while your mind races to kep up with the madness. The universe is as odd a place as ever on this album. He belongs to the indie rawk kids now. It is ok, we killed all of their indie rawkers in the previous post. Sorry. Watch the Randomnumber video, he's brilliant too. Why can't I find some place to download Modern Ambivalence anyhow? Still with the slow disintegration of the first song, planned obselescence, event horizon, etc...It's fantastic. Tinkles amidst the head rush of dizzying noise. Second song. Funk, falsetto and profanity. He plays naked now. He falls into sad indiepop mode in a lot of these songs, still. Will Pitchfork types fall for the first few albums? Perhaps Cherry Peeel but The Gay Parade? Does he play those songs live any longer? It has been a while since I have seen him. Mostly the band remains the same. This is called Wicked Wisdom. This was meant to be a radical departure. Loads of disjointed segments glued together into a whole. I suppose it is. But it still feels like a record of songs versus a collection of bits. Will this be soundtracking some of the convention events in town? Democrats have loads more sex than republicans, they will be into the salacious grooves surely. I have not yet seen a careening influx of smelly hippies and anarchists. Apparently they are staying at the homeless shelters while visiting our fine city for a bit of protest and changing the world. It really has become a profession now. They assemble dutifully, their big papier mache heads, the grammar challenged placards, the overweight lesbians who want to go topless to really express their opposition to the two party system and the communists in the background trying to organize the guy from WalMart who showed up cause his girlfriend has read No Logo. Has she read Lysander Spooner, can you be an anarchist and not have read Lysander Spooner? Hard to say. For Our Elegant Caste, surprise another song about sex. Maybe it is all metaphorical. Last record he was on about domestic violence and death and psychotropics this time it must be Cialis and priapism. What about bruxism? It could be a deviant bit of sexual athleticism intercourse with a bruxist. Our brave local newscasters have stepped away from teh Democratic convention and the breathless excitement over the Joe Biden announcement to go wire-to-wire on a tornado that almost happened here. Dedication. Joe Biden has strange teeth. Fourth song is tender and small, piano ballad, earnest falsetto. We tried to capitalize on the convention at my job, it was unsuccessful. Perhaps our potential clients thought it silly to invest when the anarchists will lose their minds once they se a McDonalds across the street from their protest headquarters in front of the capitol at Civic Center Park. When will they burn down the Nike store? Do I need to go get a pair of Nike's tonight before the conflagration begins? Will Kevin Barnes be there? it is a good place to pick up some liberal chicks surely. Put an "Obama" sticker on your Geo Metro and you will be a chick magnet. This one may be about fornication but it's pleasant and enjoyable and pretty conventional sounding. This doesn't come out until October. Sorry Mr. Barnes. I promise not to have sex with anyone until your live show here in October so that you will have all o the ladies to yourself. That's a promise I can keep. A reference to his brother. I haven't spoken to my brother in a few months. I am a terrible brother. I work all of the time. I lost my phone. If I had my phone there is only one person I would think to call but I would not anyhow. I think I know where my phone is. Gallery Piece, more sex, it's a bit clinical. he's not really boasting of his conquests, he's just letting us know how much sex he really wants to have. I wonder if these last couple of records could be used in lower level psychology courses. Was his earlier role as twee escapist fop a role he played unsatisfactorily and this is his real self represented or was he merely sick of the people who came to his concerts dressed as Rose Robert and Dr. Lecithin? I am not feeling the physicality here, it's still a head trip. The largest erogenous zone in the body is the brain after all, know what I am saying. I am unqualified to speak of sex. I don't really have any most days. This is why I am forced to watch my olympics coverage on Telemundo. Women's Studies Victims is a clever title. Germaine Greer reference, she's in a bit of a stink by claiming that all aboriginal men in Australia are predisposed to violence against women because of white Australia's racism. She could be right, but I doubt it. A few years ago she was on about having sex with boys, hairless boys, not the 30 something's whose proudest achievement is their naturally hairless chest. I rode my bike this morning and watched an old man playing basketball at 6:30 this morning. he was near my father's age. What is with the saggy old guys going shirtless in public? Later this afternoon there was an even more peripatetic soul proudly showing how his nipples can polish his shoe tops. leave them on. My father never takes his shirt off. Is it humility? It may be skin cancer. Now he's bragging about his endowment. He is not exaggerating. i could steal the pitchfork joke about his limited edition 7" but I won't. Or did I just? THis is a bit slower, more mechanistic, it's as sexy as a madonna video. Not very. So is he banging loads of chicks or what? Is he hanging out with Geraldo Rivera? Maybe this will be the entertainment just before the keynote address. it's very seventies funkadelica, I quite like the music, but he's growing tiresome. Why hasn't he given his genitalia twee names like Fifi Ferchet and Jean Claude Doume'? They could become detached from his body and roam the town as super heroes in search of excitement. one song could be about the evil villain Troy and Jan Condom. It would be brilliant! No? Is that Dotti playing the coquette? Actually he's playing both roles. His ego is out of control. I do really enjoy this. There are so many words that it is easy to let them pass without comment for the most part, the music is engaging all the way through. Now it's a bit Bloodhound Gang. Evolution! I am reading a book on theoretical biology, I wasn't aware such a thing existed before a few days ago, it's somewhat tedious to have them present list after list of what constitutes being alive. Is it the ability to reproduce, the ability to reproduce an object as complex or even more complex, is it automobility? I don't know. I am still trying to figure out the glider guns and smoke trains that are ecologically unsound even if they exist only in virtual computers. It's all head turning. Longest song on the album now, oedipus rex reference, another treatise on how much he really would like to have sex with her or anyone. Has his wife cut him off? Is he going monk? i could be first class Shaolin these days. My book doesn't have any sex, write what you know. I need to live Paul Theroux's life for a short time in order to write sex, or Germaine Greer though by rights I should be having much more sex than Germaine Greer. This album is going to sell like gangbusters at the Ritalin clinic. This could be a mystical poetic discourse on the act, like Miss Devi and Hillier in Tremor of intent where it played as some sort of erotic symphony. I was a little bothered reading it even. I have an active imagination. I live inside of my head after all. There doesn't seem to be any larger structure to this record as in foreplay, coitus, post coitus, it's all about the act. I can't understand him now, he's got creepy clingy voice, the voice he may hear inside his head while he's engaged in the act, it's the demons that try to fight back the guilt of an indie kid having sex. Indies don't have sex. Next song. This could be post-coitus, he is just repeating "I feel just like a ghost" over and over and now he sounds like Crosby, Stills and Nash. Now there's the definition of sexy! How's your liver mate. Death Is Not a Parallel Move, profound. It's tender, sounds of resignation over his aggro rants on the last record. What is the appeal f playing out your internal struggles in public on a record? But again it is probably a character. He doesn't actually mean any of this, the next record will have the sequel to Honeymoon in San Francisco surely. Strings. He's a classy lothario, straight from the Fair Penitent. Oh wait, lyrics about your sister's promiscuity and your brother's err...confusion. Video games now, more things I don't do, crystal meth, again, I live a sheltered life. Some people at work camped out to wait for the new Madden video game. I did not. This album is fantastic. It goes by in a bit of a blur, not as frantic as the last one but it's clammy and sticky and slippery and piscine. Echoes of regret in those pings? Probably not. He's a handsome young man, he should be having sex with girls with pierced labias and seventeen tattoos between their nipple and their belly button. Someone has to. My calling is Christmas. The song has moved into a segment that doesn't seem to bear any relation to what has passed before. Interesting. It's all slightly VHS or Beta. Be aware of that. Mingusings now. Is that some sort of innuendo in the title? I am so naive, it helps me retain that boyish quality. is he not just the modern version of Pat Boone then? This isn't sexy, it's neurotic sounding, it's nerdy, it's frantic and on edge You can't have sex to this. Can you? Pat Boone might do his own version of Id Engager for the Jonas Brothers crowd. It's certainly nowhere near as sexy as say a Tony Toni Tone song. It could be an accompaniment to those educational films on the science channel with the infrared porn where they zone the screen out to infrared images but you can still see the phallus at attention and Desmond Morris with his comb-over talks about how women dress more provocatively when they are ovulating, how their lips turn red when they are aroused so they accentuate with lipstick, how the act of courting involves feeding your partner to prove you are a capable partner. Nah, there's nothing that interesting here. If Desmond Morris had had a cameo ala Phil Daniels on Parklife it might have been more fantastic. It's just a groovy little kiddie pop number with your older brother who still hangs out with the kids in high school driving his grand fury behind the grandstands and smoking with the girls who look 29 but are still in 11th grade. That's kevin Barnes. Congratulations. Last song. Slow, it's the lullaby to get you to sleep after the endorphin rush of the all night festival of hedonism. Bravo. Gordon Mcintyre said it, "sex is boring", but you know this is still pretty fantastic. Better than the car crash I witnessed last evening and better than the dozen people who just drove away after witnessing it. It's better than a lot of things.