Charlotte Richardson Andrews 

Of Montreal: False Priest

Kevin Barnes is joined by Janelle Monae and Solange Knowles for an excursion into indie-funk. By Charlotte Richardson Andrews
  
  


Of Montreal's enjoyably bizarre 10th album fuses funk with indie, and sees Kevin Barnes taking his R&B-styled falsetto to unpredictably provocative places. From the "obsessive teenage lust" on Coquet Coquette to the surreal perversions of Like a Tourist ("dragon rape … unicorns eating baby meat"), Barnes loads on the kink. False Priest's funk leanings are reinforced by special guests such as Janelle Monáe, bringing a ray of glamour to Enemy Gene, and Solange Knowles, adding some sass to Sex Karma; but there's an undertow of spiritual angst throughout the album, too. It culminates in the spoken-word sermon of Do You Mutilate?, in which Barnes rips into the ills of hardline religion. It's a confrontational ending, but the journey there is wonderfully weird.

 

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