Of Montreal: "Triphallus, to Punctuate!"

Wherein Barnes shows us his stuff, so to speak.

“Triphallus, to Punctuate!” is, I think, about bell-shaped bottoms, or at least it capsules sex talk into the wackiest, most bell-ended, chorus-nebulising panic track this side of Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer (2007). Which was a really good album, Chet.

I don’t ever want to envision the bit where Kevin Barnes stops being the whiner. Thank fuck. “Triphallus, to Punctuate!” like all songs about everything ever, might have turned out the ass-end; some more rummy droning from the bed. As is, it works—alongside next month’s totally un-Insomniatic wildhog Skeletal Lamping—as pure, lush pulp. The same pulp Barnes has been making much in since, like, David Bowie. This is his zone. David Bowie is his treehouse. Meaning: more latching hooks, orgiastic deliverance, rerouted love, some peddling on the rhythmic gas-meter. It’s all loopy, disgusting and often deeply bracing stuff. Nothing is off limits now to this man Kevin, because, well, Kevin’s come home. As a black shemale, but still. The guise is the perfunctory part—one wishes, vaguely, that Barnes would ditch the boner schtick and plunge full-bore into the phenomenal sense of melody and humour (that Bowie impression) that he’s slowly eked out since, I dunno, the beginning. I still think The Gay Parade (1999) is a fantastic album. “Triphallus” is way better.

I choose to listen on, unperturbed and, presumably, horny.