The sixth full-length and first for Polyvinyl from this Athens, GA band is a departure from previous releases. There's a 70's Afro beat and an 80's new wave influence, and the songs are full of danceable electro hooks. Limited edition LP version on colored vinyl includes a bonus 7-inch with two exclusive tracks.
Satanic Panic in the Attic,Of Montreal,Polyvinyl Records,Indie Pop,Neo-Psychedelia,Pop,Rock,Rock/Pop
Satanic Panic in the Attic
Average customer rating: 
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Satanic Panic in the Attic
Of Montreal Manufacturer: Polyvinyl Records ProductGroup: Music Binding: Audio CD  General
| Alternative Rock
| Styles
| Music
Indie Rock
| Indie & Lo-Fi
| Alternative Rock
| Styles
| Music
General
| Indie & Lo-Fi
| Alternative Rock
| Styles
| Music
Neo-Psychedelia
| Rock
| Alternative Styles
| Alternative Rock
| Styles
| Music
General
| Rock
| Styles
| Music
Pop Rock
| Pop
| Styles
| Music
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ASIN: B0001LYEVY Release Date: 2004-04-06 |
Tracks:
- Disconnect The Dots
- Lysergic Bliss
- Will You Come And Fetch Me
- My British Tour Diary
- Rapture Rapes The Muses
- Eros' Entropic Tundra
- City Bird
- Erroneous Escape Into Eric Eckles
- Chrissie Kiss The Corpse
- Your Magic Is Working
- Climb The Ladder
- How Lester Lost His Wife
- Spike The Senses
- Vegan In Furs
Album Description
The sixth full-length and first for Polyvinyl from this Athens, GA band is a departure from previous releases. There's a 70's Afro beat and an 80's new wave influence, and the songs are full of danceable electro hooks. Limited edition LP version on colored vinyl includes a bonus 7-inch with two exclusive tracks.Customer Reviews:
This guy does a LOT of drugs!.......2007-02-01
Oh, and the singer does a LOT of drugs. I think every song has some sort of acid reference. For all of you psychedelics fans, you'll find these songs to be really funny at times :)
I listen to an insane amount of new music each week, and this band is putting me behind because there simply aren't enough hours in the day to hear anybody else!
Kevin Barnes at his best.......2006-11-10
Technically, the strongest Of Montreal album.......2006-11-05
"Satanic Panic..." is the band's graduation from psych-pop to new wave, just managing to keep their music assiduously twenty years behind the times. As great as "Cherry Peel" and "Gay Parade" were, they were perhaps a bit sloppy. The grander the band's concept became, the more the music may have suffered, though gems like "Let's Go for a Walk" still made their way onto the band's LPs.
Despite an album cover that looks like the first panel on a Hieronymous Bosch triptych, "Satanic Panic..." perhaps surprising represents a break from so much of what the band stood for before now. Except for the Beatlesque "City Bird" and the intro to "Will You Come and Fetch Me" (which sounds like it was ripped from Pet Sounds), the band has a much more modern sound on this record. Here they do for 80's new wave what they've already done for 60's psych-pop. Their new sound succeeds on tracks like "Your Magic is Working" and "Spike the Senses", which could have been released in 1982 and would have blown the world's mind if they had been. The opener, "Disconnect the Dots", is perhaps the best example of this shift in sound, as the band's infatuation with Brian Wilson style harmonies remains but is combined with the more 80's style instumentation and arrangement. The drumming is particularly inspired this time, a real prize as it is so necessary to have a tight rhythm section to complete the sound they are attempting here.
Enough of the band's quirkines and remarkably memorable pop hooks remain in this style to make the album a 5-star release. The follow-up album, "Sunlandic Twins", fails to preserve this sound and may mark the end of the Of Montreal we know and love. But here, at least, they were still well on top of their game. Few bands manage to re-invent themselves and still come out sounding relevant and even innovative, and this record is the rare exception to that rule.
Of Montreal's Magic is Working.......2006-05-14
Exquisite.......2006-04-04
Opener "Disconnect the Dots", sated with twinkling piano chords and ethereal percussion, lulls one into a Technicolor netherworld where harmonics rule and not a spare measure passes unexploited. This is to constitute the landscape of Satanic. "Come disconnect the dots with me poppet" Kevin Barnes sings, and even as I look up "poppet" in my OED, I find myself bobbing my head like an autistic kid.
If there remains any lingering apprehension once "Dots" has faded out of one's headphones, "Lysergic Bliss", track two, quells it. Opening with warped tribal drums overlaid by the ritualistic chant "Ooo Shakka!" the momentum breaks off into the sort of twanged guitar riff we might expect on the new Loretta Lynn release, and just as suddenly disappears altogether, usurped by a harmonized Beach Boys-esque vocal riding a rag-time piano jangle. All this in the first 45 seconds. By 2:36 we hear Barnes doing a great Freddie Mercury impression amid a polyphony of overdubbed voices.
If you simply perused Of Montreal's quirky, high-browed lyrics on paper, you'd never guess they could be sung so much as spoken, but Barnes spits in the face of convention, melding his elaborate rhymes with roiling beats driven by buoyant bass lines, hyperactive drumming and well timed xylophone flourishes. "Rapture Rapes the Muses", for instance, is replete with handclaps and propelled by a warped Merry-Go-Round melody, but also features Barnes dropping lines as impenetrable as "You keep me lit like antediluvian Troy / But one always reveres what ones bound to destroy". Um, okay. Satanic bursts at the seams with such highfalutin lines, making one thing eminently clear: Barnes' done went to college and stuff.
But before you label Satanic pedantic, understand that there are moments of blistering earnestness here, as well. On "Eros' Entropic Tundra" Barnes lays it all out, singing, "All I ever get is sad love / Always falling for the ones who feel nothing for me / Sometimes I think I should just forget about love". But what about me and you, Barnes? Right now. On the desk. Repeat. REPEAT!
If one were asked to name the defining trait of Satanic, the obvious choice would be Barnes' elaborate vocal harmonies. While he doesn't possess the greatest voice, Barnes, like The Beach Boys, readily manipulates it to great effect, sometimes disguising it as a woman's ("City Bird"), a lounge singer's ("Your Magic is Working"), or baring it a cappella ("Lysergic Bliss").
As for reference points, there are almost too many to name. Acts like The Beach Boys, Ben Folds Five, Queen, Beck (circa Odelay) and even The Pixies can be found here. But clearly, Of Montreal has not aped these sounds so much as eaten them one by one like a ravenous Star Jones who happened upon a buffet, subsequently digesting the hodgepodge of influences into their own unique, irresistible brick, which, graciously, has been shat into our awaiting ears.
"City Bird" is perhaps the only misstep here, as the meek ode to the urban creature's unrealized freedom in a voice as stilted and toneless as Nico's feels out of place on such an otherwise densely textured, multifarious album.
Panic drips creativity. Listen after listen only confirms that Barnes is an indie force to be reckoned with. Just try and remember to recharge your iPod's batteries once in a while. "Repeat" doesn't last forever and there's nothing worse than sudden, chaffing silence.
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